M.I.T. Researchers Create Molecular Chips

By NICK BILTON

mit.edu

Before you read on, take a guess what the image above might be. Go on, I’ll wait.
Nope, it’s not a fence seen from above, or a close-up photo of some spaghetti.
It’s a magnified picture of a computer chip made up of hundreds of tiny molecules.
As devices continue to get smaller, universities and private technology companies have continued to build smaller computer chips. But the miniaturization techniques they currently use, which date back more than 50 years, are reaching their limits and may not continue to work for much longer.
To keep technology moving forward, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new technology using what they call “copolymers” that will allow chip manufacturers to take molecules and arrange them into complex patterns on silicon chips.
Karl Berggren, an associate professor of electrical engineering, describes the copolymer technique with an analogy from the movie “Midnight Run,” in which a bounty hunter and white-collar criminal “are handcuffed together but can’t stand each other.” Mr. Berggren explains that the molecules make an attempt to stay away from each other and “arrange themselves into predictable patterns.”
In the past, the idea of self-assembling molecular chips would require a place for the molecules to go, sometimes including a trench etched into the chip. This new technique uses what researchers call “hitching posts,” which give the molecules somewhere to attach to make the needed shapes.