A Seminar Report on

Moletronics

SUBMITTED BY
SHIVANGI TIWARI Roll No.: - 1143131906 B.Tech. IIIrd Year VIth Semester

SEMINAR INCHARGE Mr. Awill Anurag Misra

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT Mrs. Monica Mehrotra

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering

B. N. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY, LUCKNOW-227202

2012-2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to all those who willingly helped me in completion of this seminar work. Without their help the completion of seminar would have been move like groping in the dark for a way-out. First of all I owe my thanks to Mrs. Monica Mehrotra (Head of Department, Electronics & Communication Engineering) for her guidance. I would like to extend my thanks to Mr. Awill Anurag Misra (Lecturer, Electronics & Communication Engineering Department) for his proper guidance, valuable suggestions and constructive approach to clear all my doubts during the course of this Seminar. Without his valuable suggestion and advice, completion of this seminar would have been a mammoth task.

Shivangi Tiwari B.Tech -3rd Year (EC) Roll No.- 1143131906 B.N.C.E.T, Lucknow

Table Of Content

Content
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Page no.

1. List of figure 2. Abstract 3. Introduction to Moletronics 4. History 5. Molecular circuit- QCA basis 5.1. Fundamental aspects of QCA 6. Interconnection Nanotube 7. Molecular Electronic System 7.1. Electronic structure 7.2. Different alligator clips in SAMs 7.3. Electrode Effect 8. Advantages of Moletronics 9. Disadvantages of Moletronics 10. Applications 11. Future of Molecular Electronic 12. Conclusion 13. Reference

4 5 6 9 10 13 16

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1. List of Figure
Figure no. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Figure name Molecular electronics ; An Interdiciplinary field the birth of Molecular electronics Schematic of the geometry of the basic four site cell. Coulombic repulsion The cell-cell response The Majority Gate Carbon nanotubes Break Junction Schematic of shapes of Moletronics Library of molecules under investigation

2. Abstract

Molecular electronics (moletronics) represent the ultimate challenge in device miniaturization. The concept of molecular electronics has aroused great excitement, both in science fiction and among scientists. This is because of the prospect of size reduction in electronics which is offered by molecular-level control of properties. Molecular electronics provides means to extend Moores Law beyond the foreseen limits of small-scale conventional silicon integrated circuits. It implements one or a few molecules to function as connections, switches, and other logic devices in future computational devices. Moletronics has following advantages over semiconductor devices: o Low Power Consumption. o Small and compact size. o High Speed o Low Cost o Low Temperature Manufacturing o Stereochemistry can be applied o Synthetic Flexibility is there Moletronics has got a wide range of scope applications. Till now we have created Switch and Memory units from a single molecule.With more research we will soon be able to find smaller devices which are faster, cost effective, having large battery life .

3. Introduction

Moletronics involves the study and application of molecular building blocks for the fabrication of electronic components. 1. Includes conductive polymers single-molecule electronic components 2. 2 most promising conducting molecular species are: Polyphenylene Carbon nanotubes 3. It is useful in the prospect of size reduction. 4. Extends Moore's Law beyond the foreseen limits of small-scale conventional silicon integrated circuits.

Molecular electronics, also called moletronics, is an interdisciplinary subject that spans chemistry, physics and materials science. The unifying feature of molecular electronics is the use of molecular building blocks to fabricate electronic components, both active (e.g. transistors) and passive (e.g. resistive wires). The concept of molecular electronics has aroused great excitement, both in science fiction and among scientists. This is because of the prospect of size reduction in electronics which is offered by molecular-level control of properties. Molecular electronics provides means to extend Moores Law beyond the foreseen limits of small-scale conventional silicon integrated circuits.

Fig. 1- Molecular electronics ; An Interdiciplinary field

Molecular electronics is a poorly defined term. Some authors refer to it as any molecular-based system, such as a film or a liquid crystalline array. Other authors, including Tour J. M., prefer to reserve the term molecular electronics for single-molecule tasks, such as single molecule-based devices or even single molecular wires. Due to the broad use of this term, molecular electronics are split into two related but separate subdisciplines by Petty M. C.: molecular materials for electronics utilizes the properties of the molecules to affect the bulk properties of a material, while molecular scale electronics focuses on single-molecule applications.

Figure-2s

Molecular electronics represent the ultimate challenge in device miniaturization. Molecular devices can have any no of termini with current-voltage responses that would be expected to be nonlinear due to intermediate barriers or hetero functionalities in the molecular framework while molecular wires refer to especially tailored molecular nanostructures energetic properties. Molecular-scale devices actually operating today include: FETs, junction transistors, diodes, and, molecular and mechanical switches. Logic gates with voltage gain have been built, and many techniques have been demonstrated to assemble nanometer wide wires into large arrays. Programmable and non-volatile devices which hold their state in a few molecules or in square nanometers of material have been demonstrated.

MOORES LAW 1. The number of transistors that can be fabricated on a silicon integrated circuit and therefore the computing speed of such a circuit is doubling every 18 to 24 months. 2. After four decades, solid-state microelectronics has advanced to the point at which 100 million transistors, with feature size measuring 180 nm can be put onto a few square centimeters of silicon

4.History
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a. 1950s- INVENTION OF TRANSISTOR b. 1956- ARTHUR VON GAVE IDEA ABOUT MOLECULAR ENGINEERING c. 1960s & 1970s- EXPERIMENTS ALL AROUND THE WORLD d. 1981-STM INVENTED (FIRST TOOL TO PROVIDE ABILITY TO SEE AT ATOMIC LEVEL)

Figure-2s

5. Moletronic circuit--QCA basics

We discuss an approach to computing with quantum dots, Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA), which is based on encoding binary information in the charge configuration of quantum-dot cells. The interaction between cells is Coulombic, and provides the necessary computing power. No current flows between cells and no power or information is delivered to individual internal cells. Local interconnections between cells are provided by the physics of cell-cell interaction. The links below describes the QCA cell and the process of building up useful computational elements from it. The discussion is mostly qualitative and based on the intuitively clear behavior of electrons in the cell. 5.1-Fundamental Aspects of QCA A QCA cell consists of 4 quantum dots positioned at the vertices of a square and contains 2 extra electrons. The configuration of these electrons is used to encode binary information. The 2 electrons sitting on diagonal sites of the square from left to right and right to left are used to represent the binary "1" and "0" states respectively. For an isolated cell these 2 states will have the same energy. However for an array of cells, the state of each cell is determined by its interaction with neighboring cells through the Coulomb interaction. A schematic diagram of a four-dot QCA cell is shown in Fig. 1.
.

Figure:3- Schematic of the geometry of the basic four site

cell.The tunneling energy between two neighboring sites is designated by t, while a is the near-neighbor distance

If the barriers between cells are sufficiently high, the electrons will be well localized on individual dots. The Coulomb repulsion between the electrons will tend to make them occupy antipodal sites in the square a shown in Fig. 2. For an isolated cell there are two energetically equivalent arrangements of the extra 10

electrons which we denote as a cell polarization P = +1 and P = -1. The term "cell polarization" refers only to this arrangement of charge and does not imply a dipole moment for the cell. The cell polarization is used to encode binary information - P = +1 represents a binary 1 and P = -1 represents a binary 0.

Figure:4- Coulombic repulsion causes the electrons to occupy antipodal sites within the cell. These two bistable states result in
cell polarizations of P = +1 and P = -1.

The two polarization states of the cell will not be energetically equivalent if other cells are nearby. Consider two cells close to one another as shown in the inset of Fig. 3. The figure inset illustrates the case when cell 2 has a polarization of +1. It is clear that in that case the ground-state configuration of cell 1 is also a +1 polarization. Similarly if cell 2 is in the P = -1 state, the ground state of cell 1 will match it. The figure shows the nonlinear response of the cell-cell interaction. Figure:5- The cell-cell response

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A Majority Gate Fig. 4 shows the fundamental QCA logical device, a three-input majority gate, from which more complex circuits can be built. The central cell, labeled the device cell, has three fixed inputs, labeled A, B, and C. The device cell has its lowest energy state if it assumes the polarization of the majority of the three input cells. The output can be connected to other wires from the output cell. The difference between input and outputs cells in this device, and in QCA arrays in general, is simply that inputs are fixed and outputs are free to change. The inputs to a particular device can come from previous calculations or be directly fed in from array edges. The schematic symbol used to represent such a gate is also shown in Fig. 4.

Figure:6- The Majority Gate

6. Interconnection: nanotube
Today, one way to pack transistors more densely on a chip is to make the already microscopic wires smaller and thinner. But the wires are approaching the thickness of a few hundred atoms. Once wires get down to only several atoms thick, says IBM researcher Phaedon Avouris, they blow up when you try to send electrical signals through them. Nanotubes don't. IBM and others are racing to use nanotubes to make the first carbon chips, perhaps the successor to silicon chips, though the program is only in the earliest stages. A carbon nanotube is a tubular form of carbon with a diameter as smaller as 1 nm. The length can be from a few nanometers to several microns. (1 micron is equal to 1,000 nanometers.) It is made of only carbo atoms. To understand the CNT's structure, it helps to imagine folding a two-dimensional graphene sheet. Depending on the dimensions of he sheet and how it is folded, several variations of nanotubes can arise. Also, just like the singel or the multilayer nature of graphene sheets, the resulting tubes may be a single- or a multiwall type.

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The tube's orientation is denoted by a roll-up vector(See Fig.8) graphene sheet is rolled into a tubular from. The graphene sheet. n and m are integers, and benzyne rings on the graphene tube-are possible. and

. Along this vector, the

are vectors defining a unit cell in the planer

is the angle. A variety of tubes-based on the orientations of the

If the orientation is parallel to the tube axis, then the resulting "zigzag" tubes are semiconductors. When the orientation is perpendicular to the tube axis, the corresponding "arm chair" tubes are metallic. In between the two extremes, when (n-m)/3 is an integer, the nanotubes are semimetallic. The two key

parameters, the diameter d and the chiral angle

, are related to (n,m) by

,.

For example, a(10,10) nanotube is 1.35 nm in diameter whereas a (10,10) tube is 0.78nm in diameter. Carbon nanotubes exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties as will. For example, the Young's modulus is typically over 1 Tera Pascal. Also, the nanotube along the axis is as stiff as a diamond. The estimated tensile strength is about 200 Gpa, which is an order of magnitude higher than that of any other material. Here we are mainly interested in carbon nanotube's electronic behavior and applications. The metallic and semiconducting nature described previously has given rise to the possibilities of metalsemiconductor or semiconductor junctions. These junctions may form nanoelectronic devices based entirely on single atomic species such as carbon.

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Figure:7- Carbon nanotubes: their structure, properties and

uses in nano-electronic devices

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Figure. 8

7. Molecular Electronic Systems

In order to perform as an electronic material, molecules need a set of overlapping electronic states. These states should connect two or more distant functional points or groups in the molecule. A conjugated orbital system is required for a typical candidate of molecular electronics. This conjugated system needs to extend on an -framework with terminal functional groups. Molecules for electronic applications generally have 1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional shapes as depicted in Figure . Alligator clip, which provides stable connection of the material to the metallic electrodes or inorganic substrates, is the caudal functional group of the organic 15

electronic material. It is important to note that each part of an organic molecule used as the active component in nano scale electronic device has their own contribution. In general, by measuring the conductivity of a series of systematically modified molecules, the contribution of each component can be determined. For example, by varying the molecular alligator clip and examining the molecules conductivity, the contribution of the alligator clip to the conductivity can be determined.

Fig. 9

Schematic of 1D, 2D and 3D shapes for molecular electronics.

7.1. Electronic Structures

The simplest molecules studied in molecular electronics are the alkylthiols, which only have -bonds. The others are organic molecules represented by alternating double and single bonds or alternating triple and single bonds. These are indicative of an -bonded C-C backbone with -electron delocalization. The conjugation length is defined as the extent over which the - electrons are delocalized. The double or triple bonds between carbon atoms in the molecules have an electron excess to that normally required for just -bonds. These extra electrons are in the pz orbitals which are mainly perpendicular to the bonding orbitals between adjacent carbon atoms. These electrons overlap with adjacent pz orbitals to form a delocalized -electron cloud. This cloud spreads over several units along the backbone. When this happens, delocalized valence (bonding) and * conduction (anti-bonding) bands with defined bandgap are formed which meets the requirements for (semi)conducting behavior. Normally the electrons reside in the lower energy valence band. If given sufficient energy, they can be excited into the normally empty upper conduction band, giving rise to a * transition. Intermediate states are forbidden by quantum mechanics. The delocalized -electron system confers the (semi)conducting properties on the molecule and gives it the ability to support charge transport.

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Modifications can be done based on the backbone to improve electron transfer properties. Scheme shows several popular backbones for a 1D molecular electronic material. Backbones for 2D and 3D molecular electronics are similar to 1Ds.

Representative structures for 1D molecular electronic materials; (a) Alkyldithiol; (b) Oligo(pphenylene)-dithiol (c) (p-phenylene ethynylene)-dithiol.

Fig. 10

Library of molecules under investigation

7.2. Different Alligator Clips in SAMs 17

Scheme 2 Representative alligator clips for forming SAMs. 1,2-dioctyldisulfane (a); bis(4,4biphenyl)ditelluride (b); benzenethiol (c); benzene-1,4-dithiol (d); S-phenylethanethioate (e); S,S-1,4phenylene diethanethioate (f); 4,4-biphenyl selenoacetate (g); phenyl isocyanide (h);1,4-phenylene diisocyanide (i); 2-nitro-1,4-bis(phenylethynyl)benzene diazonium tetrafluoroboride (j)

Scheme 2 shows some common alligator clips used in molecular electronics for forming SAMs. The acetylprotected thiols and dithiols can be deprotected in situ under acid or base conditions to form SAMs on gold substrate. The diazonium salt generates an aryl radical by loss of N 2 and ultimately produces an irreversible gold-aryl bond. Isocyanide and diisocyanide also perform gold-carbon bond. Among all the alligator clips, sulfur compounds have a strong affinity to transition metal surfaces. This is probably because of the possibility to form multiple bonds with surface metal clusters. The number of reported surface active organosulfur compounds and their derivatives that form monolayers on gold include, di- n-alkyl sulfide, di-nalkyl disulfides, thiophenols, thiophenes, mercaptopyridines, mercaptoanilines, xanthates, cysteines,thiocarbamates, thiocarbaminates, thioureas, mercaptoimidazoles, ditellurides and alkaneselenols. SAMs of alkanethiolates on Au surfaces are the most studied and well understood.

7.3. Electrode Effects There has been great interest in molecular electronics since the observation of electrical conductivity of the molecules from early experiments with the junction formed by sandwiching the molecule between two metal electrodes. However, it has been shown that in some systems, it was not the molecules themselves but the metal contacts that mainly contribute to the junction conductivity. The misleading observations from early 18

experiments are due to the so called metal nanofilaments effect. The metal nanofilaments effect is caused by the movements of metal atoms from the contacts to the tiny gap (several nanometers) between the two contacts with a bundle of molecules in between when an electric field is applied. The metal atoms in the gap act as a low resistance bridge between the two contacts. Instead of flowing through the molecule, electrical current tends to pass through the low-resistance bridge. More recently, He et al. proposed a metal-free system in which the two sides of a molecular monolayer attached to single-crystal silicon and a mat of single-walled carbon nanotubes, respectively Figure .Such a design eliminated the metal nanofilaments effect and switching property was observed under an applied field.

(a)
(a) Metal-molecule-metal junction with metal nanofilaments effect. (b) Carbon nanotube-molecule-silicon junction.

(b)

Molecule-electrode interface is therefore a critically important component in molecular electronics. It may limit the current flow or completely modify the measured electrical response of the junction. Most experimental platforms for constructing the molecular-electronic devices are based on the fact that the sulfurgold bond is an excellent chemical handle for forming self-assembled, robust organic monolayers on metal surfaces. Other methods, such as contacting a scanning probe tip with the surface of the molecule, are frequently employed. Ideally, the choice of electrode materials should not be based on the ease of fabrication or measurement. They must follow the first-principles considerations of the molecule-electrode interactions. However, the current level of understanding of the molecule-electrode interface is rather poor. Very little theory exists that can adequately predict how the energy levels of the molecular orbitals will align with the Fermi energy of the electrode. Small changes in energy levels can dramatically affect the junction conductance. Therefore it is critical to understand the correlation of the interface energy levels which demands both theoretical and experimental study. A relevant consideration involves how the chemical nature of the molecule-electrode interface affects the rest of the molecule. The zero-bias coherent conductance of a molecular junction may be described as a product of functions that describe the molecules electronic structure and the molecule-electrode interfaces. However, it is likely that the chemical interaction between the molecule and the electrode will modify the molecules electron density in the vicinity of the contacting atoms and, in turn, modify the molecular energy levels or the barriers within the junction. There is little doubt that the molecular and interface functions must be considered in tandem in theoretical studies.

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8. Advantages of Molecular Electronics

Molecular structures are very important in determining the properties of bulk materials, especially for application as electronic devices. The intrinsic properties of existing inorganic electronic materials may not be capable of forming a new generation of electronic devices envisioned, in terms of feature sizes, operation speeds and architectures. However, electronics based on organic molecules could offer the following advantages: Size Molecules are in the nanometer scale between 1 and 100 nm. This scale permits small devices with more efficient heat dissipation and less overall production cost to be made. Power: One of the reasons that transistors are not stacked into 3D volumes today is that the silicon would melt. The inefficiency of the modern transistor is staggering. It is much less efficient at its task than the internal combustion engine. The brain provides an existence proof of what is possible; it is 100 million times more efficient in power/calculation than our best processors. Sure it is slow (under a kHz) but it is massively interconnected (with 100 trillion synapses between 60 billion neurons), and it is folded into a 3D volume. Power per calculation will dominate clock speed as the metric of merit for the future of computation. Assembly One can exploit different intermolecular interactions to form a variety of structures by the array of self-assembly techniques which are reported in the literature. The scope of application of the self-assembly technique is only limited by the researchers ability to explore. Manufacturing Cost - Many of the molecular electronics designs use simple spin coating or molecular selfassembly of organic compounds. The process complexity is embodied in the synthesized molecular structures, and so they can literally be splashed on to a prepared silicon wafer. The complexity is not in the deposition or the manufacturing process or the systems engineering. Much of the conceptual difference of nanotech products derives from a biological metaphor: complexity builds from the bottom up and pivots about conformational changes, weak bonds, and surfaces. It is not engineered from the top with precise manipulation and static placement. Low Temperature Manufacturing: Biology does not tend to assemble complexity at 1000 degrees in a high vacuum. It tends to be room temperature or body temperature. In a manufacturing domain, this opens the possibility of cheap plastic substrates instead of expensive silicon ingots. Stereochemistry A large number of molecules can be made with indistinguishable chemical structures and properties. On the other hand, many molecules can exist as distinct stable geometric structures or isomers. Such geometric isomers exhibit unique electronic properties. Moreover, electronic properties of conformers can be affected by pressure and temperature. We can therefore make use of stereochemistry to tune properties. 20

9. DISADVANTAGES
1) Molecular electronics must still be integrated with Silicon. 2) The determination of the resistance of a single molecule (both theoritical and experimental) is complex. 4) It is difficult to perform direct characterization since imaging at the molecular scale is often impossible in many experimental devices.

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10. Applications of Molecular Electronics

Molecular electronics seeks to be the next technology in the electronics industry where molecules assemble themselves into devices using environmentally friendly and low cost fabrication techniques. It goes beyond the limitations of rigid silicon-based solutions. It implements one or a few molecules to function as connections, switches, and other logic devices in future computational devices. Molecular electronics can be used in emerging technologies ranging from novel optical discs based on bistable biomolecules to conceptual design of the computers based on molecular switches and wires.

Molecular electronics seeks to be the next technology in the electronics industry where molecules assemble themselves into devices using environmentally friendly and low cost fabrication techniques. It goes beyond the limitations of rigid silicon-based solutions. It implements one or a few molecules to function as connections, switches, and other logic devices in future computational devices. Molecular electronics can be 22

used in emerging technologies ranging from novel optical discs based on bistable biomolecules to conceptual design of the computers based on molecular switches and wires. The processing speed of existing computers is limited by the time it takes for an electron to travel between devices. Molecular electronics-based computation addresses the ultimate requirements in a dimensionally scaled system: ultra dense, ultra fast and molecular-scale. By the use of molecular scale electronic interconnects, the transmittance times could be minimized. This could result in novel computational systems operating at far greater speeds than conventional inorganic electronics. The design of a molecular CPU can bring great technical renovation in computer science. Table 1 shows the main differences between the present bulk electronic devices and the proposed molecular electronic devices.

Table 1:Main characteristics of bulk and molecular CPU circuits.

Novel molecular electronics would approach the density of ~1013 logic gates/cm2. It offers a 105 decrease in the size dimensions compared to the present feature of a silicon-based microchip. In addition, the present fastest devices can only operate in nanosecond while the response times of molecular-sized systems can reach the range of femtoseconds. Thus, the speed may be attained to a 10 6 increase. On the basis of these estimates, a 1011 fold increase in the performance can be expected with molecular electronics, which offers an exciting impetus for intense research and development though numerous obstacles remain. Many of the technological applications of molecular electronics, including the computational applications, should be considered and viewed as the drivers for the field. Tours group has demonstrated the synthetic/computational approach to digital computing of molecular scale electronics. In his paper, the alligator clip SH acted as the contact to input or output in digital computing of molecular electronics. The alkyl groups which broke the conjugation of the wire served as the transport barrier in the integrated circuits. The successful development of molecular-electronic integrated circuitry would also benefit Nano mechanical devices, ultra dense single-molecule sensor arrays, the interfaces to bio systems and the pathways toward molecular mechanical systems. Switch using Moletronics Benzene ring of six carbon atoms (with a few hydrogen atoms thrown in as well) is held together in part by a pi bonda sort of smeared bond in which some of the electrons are loosely shared by all the atoms in a kind of cloud that circles above and below the carbon ring. Its not a broken bond. Instead, its a sort of bond within which electrons are somewhat more able to move.

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By changing the structure of the molecule, the researchers found that they were able to alter its behaviour. They hung molecular fragmentsan NH2 group and an NO2 groupfrom the middle benzene ring. This distorted the electron cloud, making the molecule more susceptible to twisting. By applying a voltage to the molecule, for example, they could cause a change, a bend or a twist in the molecule. This disrupted the flow of electrons

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And, this twist was reversible. When the voltage was removed, the molecule returned to its original shape, allowing current to pass through once again. In other words, this molecule can act as a switch. It turns electricity on and offa basic characteristic that a computer needs to process information in bits of 1 and 0.

Memory Chip Data storage is done by multiporphyrin nanostructures into electronic memory. The application of a voltage causes the molecules to oxidize, or give up electrons.The molecules then retain their positive charge after the electric field is removed, producing a memory effect.

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Memory Hold Time Silicon memory devices retain charged bits for only a millisecond before the charge leaks away. That means that each piece of information must be restored ten to a hundred times a second, which requires substantial amounts of power. Moletronic device retains its electrons for about nearly fifteen minutes. It has the ability to get the information in and out of the systems and using significantly less

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power. Compared to, say, current equipment, which only runs for a few hours before the batteries wear out, Reed says, machines using molecular memory could run for a week. Theres an energy structure that explains how long a deviceeither silicon, or molecularwill hold electrons. They leak out at a certain rate and when you go to a molecular structure, the energies [holding the electrons in place] become much bigger. So the leak-out rate is slower.

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.
11. Future of Molecular Electronics
The drive toward yet further miniaturization of silicon-based electronics has led to a revival of efforts to build devices with molecular-scale organic components. However, the fundamental challenges of realizing a true molecular electronics technology are daunting. Controlled fabrication within specified tolerances and its experimental verification are major issues. Self-assembly schemes based on molecular recognition will be crucial for that task. Ability to measure electrical properties of organic molecules more accurately and reliably is paramount in future developments. Fully reproducible measurements of junction conductance are just beginning to be realized in labs at Purdue, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Delft, and Karlsruhe Universities and at the Naval Research Laboratory and other centers. Working molecular electronic devices exist today. Research progress is steady and strong, giving us cause to believe that molecular electronic systems may be practical in five to ten years. If lithography reaches 28

fundamental physical or economic limits, molecular electronics may allow us to continue observing Moores Law. Regardless, molecular bottom-up fabrication could give us a much better alternative, whose price would depend mainly on design and test cost, instead of billion-dollar factories. Challenges to making this reality are plentiful at every level, some naturally in physics and chemistry, but many in ICCAD. These include fabricating and integrating devices, managing their power and timing, finding fault-tolerant and defect-tolerant circuits and architectures and the test algorithms needed to use them, developing latency-tolerant circuits and systems, doing defect-aware placement and routing, and designing, verifying and compiling billion-gate designs and the tools to handle them. Any one of these could block practical molecular electronics if unsolved. Many of these are challenges that will be faced regardless of the underlying technology. Molecular electronics provides a pure and extreme example, and strengthens the case for solving them sooner rather than later. Robust modeling methods are also necessary in order to bridge the gap between the synthesis and understanding of molecules in solution and the performance of solid-state molecular devices. In addition, the searching of fabrication approaches which can couple the densities achievable through lithography with those achievable through molecular assembly is also a great challenge. Controlling the properties of moleculeelectrode interfaces and constructing molecular-electronic devices that can exhibit signal gain are also crucial to the development in the field.

12.Conclusion
Molecular electronics is an exciting emergent field of study. The reward of research in this area is enormous as the birth of molecular computer implies unprecedented processing power that may enable breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. This paper has given a glimpse at how such an endeavor might be accomplished by introducing the basic ideas in molecular device implementation and electrical characterization methods. The path towards a full working system is still a long one, yet the prospects are bright and great strides have been taken.

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13. References

1. Wikipedia
2. Transcending Moore's Law with Molecular Electronics and Nanotechnology

http://www.dfj.com/files/TranscendingMoore.pdf 3. STANFORD and HARVARD University thesis links. 4. Hewlett-Packard Company Catalogue.

5. Zettacore Company Catalogue. 6. Elsevier Ltd link by Paula Gould.

7. 2011 Molecular electronics archive http://www.nature.com/nmat/archive/subject_nmatcode-

13_012011.html 30

8. YALE Engineering http://www.eng.yale.edu/posters150/pdf/reed4.pdf

9. Other useful IEEE papers and links

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