Quo vadis, unimolecular electronics?

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Robert Melville Metzger¹

¹Laboratory for Molecular Electronics, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Alabama, Box 870336, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0336, USA. rmetzger@ua.edu.

|May 26, 2018

Abstract:

This paper reviews the present status of unimolecular electronics (UME). The field started in the 1970s with a hope that some day organic molecules (∼2 nm in size), when used as electronic components, would challenge Si-based inorganic electronics in ultimate-high-density integrated circuits. The technological push to ever smaller inorganic device sizes (Moore's "law") was driven by a profit motive and by vast investments. UME, the underfunded pauper, may have lost that "race to the bottom", but some excellent science is left to be done.

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