Carbon nanotubes

“Carbon nanotubes can in principle play the same role as silicon as in electronic circuits”.

Although the electronics industry is already pushing the critical dimensions of transistors in commercial chips be-low 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter)- 400 atoms wide-engineers face large obstacles in continuing the miniaturization.

Within this decade, the materials and processes on which the computer revolution has been built will begin to hit fundamental physical limits.

Two major problems have so far thwarted attempts to shrink metal wires further.

1. There is as yet no good way to remove the heat produced by the devices, so packing them in more tightly will only lead to rapid overheating.

2. As metal wires get smaller, the gust of electrons moving through them becomes strong enough to bump the metal atoms around, and before long the wires fail like blown fuses