Just who's laughing now Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Smartypants????
exchange2000.com
Subject: Gateway 2000
| Previous | Next | Respond | +Earnings |
To: +Skeeter Bug (5374 )
From: +Dr. David Gleitman Wednesday, Feb 18 1998 11:08PM EST
Reply # of 5405
OT:
With regards to surface mount technology, I though you mifght be interested in this article from the Jerusalem Post:
Technion scientists 'coax' molecules to form electric
circuit
By JUDY SIEGEL
JERUSALEM (February 19) - Israeli scientists have become the first to "coax" individual biological
molecules into forming an electric circuit.
This marriage of biotechnology and electronics will eventually make possible the production of a
transistor sized 1/100,000th of the width of a human hair, 100th or less of the space required today.
The breakthrough was accomplished by Prof. Uri Sivan, Dr. Erez Braun and Dr. Yoav Eichen of the
Technion.
"In conventional micro-electronics, you start trying to reduce size as much as possible, from the top
down. In a biological system, you begin with information in the DNA and build from bottom to top,"
Sivan explained yesterday on the eve of publication of their discovery in Nature. "No one can
manually arrange molecules of this size - which can be viewed only via an atomic force microscope -
so we had to use molecules in which all chemical information is coded, allowing self-assembly into
structures based on chemical selectivity."
He added that the basic problem that had to be overcome is that "if you look for a system that builds
itself, the molecules are insulated and don't transfer electricity; metals, which do pass electrons, don't
self-assemble. We therefore decided to integrate biological and electronic materials to take
advantage of both properties."
The Technion team produced a preliminary demonstration of an enabling technology that uses
processes of molecular recognition unique to biological molecules and place miniature electronic
components in molecular sites to form a complete electronic circuit.
They placed conducting electrodes on an insulating substrate while connecting the outer parts of the
electrodes externally to a computer, for example, while the internal part was coated with short DNA
molecules.
Each of the DNA molecules had a defined and different "genetic" code for each electrode.
Then long-stranded DNA molecules with complementary sequences were stretched between the
electrodes, based on molecular recognition, so a complete DNA network was created. This
network didn't conduct electrons, but it served as an "intelligent" template for the assembly of the
electronic circuit by coating it with a conducting metal.
In a series of experiments, the scientists demonstrated their concept by producing a conducting
metal wire connecting two gold electrodes 12 microns apart. The diameter of the wire was 100
nanometers (each of these is 1/100,000th of the width of a human hair).
"The applications could take 20 years, but they are virtually infinite," explained Sivan. "Using
transistors of this size, you could store all knowledge printed in every book in the world inside a
cube 1/5 of a millimeter in each direction. Our work was basic science, and applications in
nanoelectronics are still far off, but this alternative technology to micro-electronics will allow the
production of devices that are 100-300 times smaller, with higher complexity, at a lower cost.
Beyond the miniaturization, the innovation will make possible entirely new logic based on extensive
connectivity."
Best of luck.
David
| Previous | Next | Respond | View reply to this message
View SubjectMarks Bookmark this Subject
Return to Computers
One or more words separated by spaces:
Subject Titles Only
Full-Text
Messages with Links
Send questions and feedback to webmistress@techstocks.com
Terms of Use |
