| IBM claims nano breakthroughs |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Friday, 31 August 2007 | |
  
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That would allow nearly 30,000 feature length movies or the entire contents of YouTube (more than 1,000 trillion bits) on a device the size of an iPod, IBM officials said. "We are working at the ultimate edge of what is possible – and we are now one step closer to figuring out how to store data at the atomic level," said Gian-Luca Bona, manager of science and technology at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. The other finding, made at IBM's Zurich lab, is that it is possible to create a molecular switch that does not change its shape when switching. Previous molecular switches have changed shape in the process of changing state, making them unsuitable for use in logic gates. Company officials say the switching action - involving two hydrogen atoms within a naphthalocyanine molecule - is "well-defined, highly-localised, reversible, intrinsic to the molecule, and does not involve changes in the molecular frame." The long-term potential is for computer chips as small as specks of dust, but the first challenge is to work out how to combine these switches into circuits. The naphthalocyanine molecule was being studied in terms of molecular vibrations when scientists saw its potential for switching. "One of the beauties of doing exploratory science is that by researching one area, you sometimes stumble upon other areas of major significance," said Gerhard Meyer, senior researcher in the nanoscale science group at the IBM Zurich lab. "Although the discovery of this breakthrough was accidental, it may prove to be significant for building the computers of the future." |
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