Scientists said that they have designed tiny wires, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair but with the same electrical capacity as copper, in a major step toward building smaller, more potent computers.
The advance, described in the US journal Science, shows for the first time that wires one atom tall and four atoms wide can carry a charge as well as conventional wires.
That could lead to even tinier electronic devices in the future as well as new steps toward quantum computing, an industry still in its infancy which would create powerful computers that could sift through massive amounts of data faster than current digital computers which use binary code.
Scientists were able to forge atom-sized wires in silicon using a technique called scanning tunneling microscopy, whereby they placed chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal.
The nano-wires they built this way ranged from 1.5 to 11 nanometers thick.
But even though the circuits were smaller, scientists observed no increased difficulty in coaxing an electric charge through them -- what has previously been considered a major obstacle to quantum computing.
The advance, described in the US journal Science, shows for the first time that wires one atom tall and four atoms wide can carry a charge as well as conventional wires.
That could lead to even tinier electronic devices in the future as well as new steps toward quantum computing, an industry still in its infancy which would create powerful computers that could sift through massive amounts of data faster than current digital computers which use binary code.
Scientists were able to forge atom-sized wires in silicon using a technique called scanning tunneling microscopy, whereby they placed chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal.
The nano-wires they built this way ranged from 1.5 to 11 nanometers thick.
But even though the circuits were smaller, scientists observed no increased difficulty in coaxing an electric charge through them -- what has previously been considered a major obstacle to quantum computing.
