There are physical limits to how powerful computers can become if they are to maintain their size. Molecular electronics can solve that problem, and now SDU researchers are contributing to this field with a new, efficient conducting material, based on molecules.
Our computers are becoming more and more powerful all the time. They also often become smaller—just think of what a standard smartphone can do today compared to just a few years ago.
But the development cannot last.
"With our current technology, we will soon reach the limit of how small the components within a computer can be," says Steffen Bähring from the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark. He studies molecules and for this study he investigated how good they are at conducting electricity.
"The current technology based on silicon will reach the limit within the next 10 years and we do not yet have a technology ready to take over. But molecules are candidates to push the limit much further," he believes.
Together with international colleagues Jonathan L. Sessler (Texas, USA), Dirk M. Guldi (Erlangen, Germany) and Atanu Jana (Shanghai, China), he has just published a new scientific study on the composition of molecules in liquids and as crystalline materials which proved particularly interesting.
The study is published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society.
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