Computational Tools to Study and Predict the Long-Term Stability of Nanowires

M. E. ZOLOFF MICHOFF; P. VÉLEZ; S. A. DASSIE; E. P. M. LEIVA

Electrodeposited Nanowires and Their Applications

InTech

Lugar: Vukovar; Año: 2010; p. 1 - 34

“The era in which the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles at a constant rate is drawing to a close”. This is not the prophecy of an obscure mind, but is more or less the conclusion drawn by none other than the man who coined Moores´ law1. In an interview held in 2007, Gordon Moore recognized that by about 2020, his law would come up against the laws of physics. Furthermore, he recognized a change in a paradigm: the replacement of the top-down approach currently used for building circuits by a bottom-up procedure, where chips would be assembled using individual atoms or molecules. This is nothing but the realm of nanotechnology, while there is some consensus that the elementary switches of these circuits should be molecules with some feature allowing for the on/off status required for the components of logical devices, many questions remain concerning their stability. In the case of micrometric circuit components temperature may be an issue, but in the case of single molecules thermal effects may be overwhelming, since current flow occurs across a single bond. The lifetime of this bond, will determine the lifetime of the circuit component. Under these conditions, circuit engineering will be coming unexpectedly close to chemical kinetics.