Organizing dumbbells for nanotech devices

A team of chemists from France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US are working together to bridge the gap between nanoscience and nanotechnology. They have now devised a method that could allow them to organize tiny molecular machines on a surface and so build devices that pack in thousands of times as many switching units, for instance, than is possible with a conventional silicon chip.
Chemist Fraser Stoddart, now at the University of California Los Angeles, and his co-workers have designed and made numerous molecules based on hanging ring-shaped molecules on other chain-like molecules and loops. By incorporating functional chemical groups along the length of the chain or around these loops, they have shown that it is possible to make the molecular beads switch between these various functional groups using heat, light, or electricity. The ultimate aim of creating such molecular-scale devices is to use them as switching units or logic gates in a future computer based on molecules instead of silicon chips.
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