The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of July 27th

#3 Biology could rescue Moore’s Law

In Australia, researchers are looking to overcome the technical limitations of Moore’s Law—computing’s mandate to increase the power of semiconductors at regular intervals—by employing molecular biology. “Molecular electronics hasn’t previously lived-up to expectations, but we’ve seen a renaissance of the field in the last five to six years,” Macquarie University associate professor Koushik Venkatesan, tells IT News. The researchers say using molecules engineered to work like circuits could reduce device sizes by a factor of ten. Up until now, the lack of a stable platform for the molecules has limited the field of molecular electronics. However, nanotechnology—specifically a non-destructive, metallic nanolayer that provides a conductive contact between a metallic bed and the molecules—has made this possible. Their work was published in a recent issue of Nature.

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