5 ms·

An unusual class of molecules could revolutionise the electronics industry

103 points by rustoo 8y ago

smrk007 8y ago
I'm not entirely sure if I understand – What electrical component could these be used to replace? Could they be used to build single molecule wires, or something like single molecule NAND gates, etc?
- pytyper2 8y ago
  My lay-brain imagines that a wire of the same "length" could hold much more power that would flow with much less resistance.
  - thfuran 8y ago
    Why?
    - pytyper2 8y ago
      I wish I could answer that, probably some delusional personality trait that wants to study science instead of programming.
- gilleain 8y ago
  The title of the paper is "Helical orbitals and circular currents in linear carbon wires"... ... but they do refer to them as "promising candidates for novel applications" which indicates actual applications are a little way off. Incidentally, although it's easy to write these molecules in text (like C=C=C=C=C=C...) that does not really show the helical orbitals. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/sc/c8sc05464a https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/sc/c8sc0546...
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  > these molecules might be candidates for spin-selective transport and/or sensitivity to magnetic fields (...) We hope that at some point these quantum effects can be used in electronic devices which are nothing like the ones we use today. Basically they're hoping to achieve some form of novel device, not replace existing components. This isn't without precedent - we have examples like Hall effect and giant magnetoresistive sensors. Both of these went from "weird quantum phenomenon" to "everyone has a device in their home with a component built on this tech".
  - fredgrott 8y ago
    bombs with electronic triggers is one example of application of a bomb detection sensor...another one is a medial device sensor for safety on cancer medical treatment devices
- moftz 8y ago
  You could make finer resolution magnetic field sensors. For example, scanning magnetic microscopes are used to image the weak magnetic fields of integrated circuits. You can gain better insight to the design of the circuit and find weird things happening that current hardware has trouble seeing.
Symmetry 8y ago
"Today, research in molecular electronics, in terms of using single molecules, is still at a conceptual stage", says Dr Solomon. "But organic electronics, using films of molecules, is an extremely important technology in many consumer products." People have gotten carbon nanotubes at least into prototypes rather than just conceptual work. Getting the tubes to stick to the pads reliably enough to form whole computers isn't possibly now but if you're willing to pay enough for a nanotube based 7400 series chip I'm not aware of anything stopping you.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  Well there's also performance characteristics which iirc are not quite CMOS grade yet. Also idk how much of an problem contact resistance would be.
MLWithPhil 8y ago
Just a heads up to those who haven't published in peer review journals: hyping the potential commercial applications of your research, no matter how mundane the discovery, is required. Worse yet, the published work concerns simulations. Simulations are cool, and have great value, but they don't constitute discovery. Confirmation of a theoretical prediction by experimentalists constitutes a discovery. Even if the effect is confirmed, the road to putting it into commercial use is long and most likely a dead end. I know first hand that "nanoscience" isn't so much science as it is an art. Tiny imperfections result in large changes to desired effects. This is due to the increased contribution of interfaces and surfaces relative to the bulk. The very same property that leads to novel physics is the one that defeats the potential for practical applications. I long for the day when people can do good science just for the sake of good science, and not have to spin every single paper as being the start of some new revolution that never seems to come.
- umhau 8y ago
  > I long for the day when people can do good science just for the sake of good science, and not have to spin every single paper as being the start of some new revolution that never seems to come. I absolutely agree - but I think that's only going to happen when people's livlihoods are not dependent on the immediate value of their research.
  - semi-extrinsic 8y ago
    J. J. Thompson (who discovered the electron) said this about 100 years ago: If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.
mnemotronic 8y ago
Does electricity at this level -- electrons moving in a corkscrew motion down a wire -- generate an electromagnetic field? If so, how does this field differ from electron motion in a normal conductor?
- systemspeed 8y ago
  My understanding was that the helical shape described the orbital of the electron at the molecular level and not its track down an actual wire. I think the hope is to exploit this helical shape using external electromagnetic sources of energy to manipulate (move/rotate) individual molecules due to this. Disclaimer: I am a layman in this realm. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- 100ideas 8y ago
  It is creating an electric field for every observer not in a reference frame at rest with respect to the electron.
eridius 8y ago
I thought this was a remarkably bizarre sentence: > "Unlike the wires we know from everyday life, where electric current runs directly through the wire, the current runs in a circular fashion as it proceeds through these molecules. This behaviour is due to a quantum mechanical effect known as electrohelicity, which in this case causes electrons in molecules to move in a helical fashion, spiralling around the molecule." It's a circular definition. They basically said "the current runs in a circular fashion due to a quantum mechanical effect known as current-runs-in-circular-fashionicity, which in this case causes current to run in a circular fashion"
- ximeng 8y ago
  It can be useful to introduce a canonical term for a phenomenon, even if there is limited immediate explanatory value.
  - setr 8y ago
    In this case it was just poorly done; they explained that it was caused by X, then redundantly restated that X caused it but in a format that looks like X was being defined

103 points by rustoo 8y ago

I'm not entirely sure if I understand – What electrical component could these be used to replace? Could they be used to build single molecule wires, or something like single molecule NAND gates, etc?

pytyper2 8y ago
My lay-brain imagines that a wire of the same "length" could hold much more power that would flow with much less resistance.
- thfuran 8y ago
  Why?
  - pytyper2 8y ago
    I wish I could answer that, probably some delusional personality trait that wants to study science instead of programming.
gilleain 8y ago
The title of the paper is "Helical orbitals and circular currents in linear carbon wires"... ... but they do refer to them as "promising candidates for novel applications" which indicates actual applications are a little way off. Incidentally, although it's easy to write these molecules in text (like C=C=C=C=C=C...) that does not really show the helical orbitals. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/sc/c8sc05464a https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/sc/c8sc0546...
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
> these molecules might be candidates for spin-selective transport and/or sensitivity to magnetic fields (...) We hope that at some point these quantum effects can be used in electronic devices which are nothing like the ones we use today. Basically they're hoping to achieve some form of novel device, not replace existing components. This isn't without precedent - we have examples like Hall effect and giant magnetoresistive sensors. Both of these went from "weird quantum phenomenon" to "everyone has a device in their home with a component built on this tech".
- fredgrott 8y ago
  bombs with electronic triggers is one example of application of a bomb detection sensor...another one is a medial device sensor for safety on cancer medical treatment devices
moftz 8y ago
You could make finer resolution magnetic field sensors. For example, scanning magnetic microscopes are used to image the weak magnetic fields of integrated circuits. You can gain better insight to the design of the circuit and find weird things happening that current hardware has trouble seeing.

Symmetry 8y ago

"Today, research in molecular electronics, in terms of using single molecules, is still at a conceptual stage", says Dr Solomon. "But organic electronics, using films of molecules, is an extremely important technology in many consumer products." People have gotten carbon nanotubes at least into prototypes rather than just conceptual work. Getting the tubes to stick to the pads reliably enough to form whole computers isn't possibly now but if you're willing to pay enough for a nanotube based 7400 series chip I'm not aware of anything stopping you.

deepnotderp 8y ago
Well there's also performance characteristics which iirc are not quite CMOS grade yet. Also idk how much of an problem contact resistance would be.

MLWithPhil 8y ago

Just a heads up to those who haven't published in peer review journals: hyping the potential commercial applications of your research, no matter how mundane the discovery, is required. Worse yet, the published work concerns simulations. Simulations are cool, and have great value, but they don't constitute discovery. Confirmation of a theoretical prediction by experimentalists constitutes a discovery. Even if the effect is confirmed, the road to putting it into commercial use is long and most likely a dead end. I know first hand that "nanoscience" isn't so much science as it is an art. Tiny imperfections result in large changes to desired effects. This is due to the increased contribution of interfaces and surfaces relative to the bulk. The very same property that leads to novel physics is the one that defeats the potential for practical applications. I long for the day when people can do good science just for the sake of good science, and not have to spin every single paper as being the start of some new revolution that never seems to come.

umhau 8y ago
> I long for the day when people can do good science just for the sake of good science, and not have to spin every single paper as being the start of some new revolution that never seems to come. I absolutely agree - but I think that's only going to happen when people's livlihoods are not dependent on the immediate value of their research.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  J. J. Thompson (who discovered the electron) said this about 100 years ago: If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.

mnemotronic 8y ago

Does electricity at this level -- electrons moving in a corkscrew motion down a wire -- generate an electromagnetic field? If so, how does this field differ from electron motion in a normal conductor?

systemspeed 8y ago
My understanding was that the helical shape described the orbital of the electron at the molecular level and not its track down an actual wire. I think the hope is to exploit this helical shape using external electromagnetic sources of energy to manipulate (move/rotate) individual molecules due to this. Disclaimer: I am a layman in this realm. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
100ideas 8y ago
It is creating an electric field for every observer not in a reference frame at rest with respect to the electron.

eridius 8y ago

I thought this was a remarkably bizarre sentence: > "Unlike the wires we know from everyday life, where electric current runs directly through the wire, the current runs in a circular fashion as it proceeds through these molecules. This behaviour is due to a quantum mechanical effect known as electrohelicity, which in this case causes electrons in molecules to move in a helical fashion, spiralling around the molecule." It's a circular definition. They basically said "the current runs in a circular fashion due to a quantum mechanical effect known as current-runs-in-circular-fashionicity, which in this case causes current to run in a circular fashion"

ximeng 8y ago
It can be useful to introduce a canonical term for a phenomenon, even if there is limited immediate explanatory value.
- setr 8y ago
  In this case it was just poorly done; they explained that it was caused by X, then redundantly restated that X caused it but in a format that looks like X was being defined