Organic Molecules Challenge

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Term Paper Title	Organic Molecules Challenge
# of Words	2402
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	9.61

Organic Molecules Challenge

Organic Molecules Challenge
Silicon's Reign as King of Semiconductors

There is a revolution fomenting in the semiconductor industry. It may take 30
years or more to reach perfection, but when it does the advance may be so great
that today's computers will be little more than calculators compared to what
will come after. The revolution is called molecular electronics, and its goal is
to depose silicon as king of the computer chip and put carbon in its place.

The perpetrators are a few clever chemists trying to use pigment, proteins,
polymers, and other organic molecules to carry out the same task that
microscopic patterns of silicon and metal do now. For years these researchers
worked in secret, mainly at their blackboards, plotting and planning. Now they
are beginning to conduct small forays in the laboratory, and their few successes
to date lead them to believe they were on the right track.

"We have a long way to go before carbon-based electronics replace silicon-based
electronics, but we can see now that we hope to revolutionize computer design
and performance," said Robert R. Birge, a professor of chemistry, Carnegie-
Mellon University, Pittsburgh. "Now it's only a matter of time, hard work, and
some luck before molecular electronics start having a noticeable impact."

Molecular electronics is so named because it uses molecules to act as the
"wires" and "switches" of computer chips. Wires, may someday be replaced by
polymers that conduct electricity, such as polyacetylene and
polyphenylenesulfide. Another candidate might be organometallic compounds such
as porphyrins and phthalocyanines which also conduct electricity. When
crystallized, these flat molecules stack like pancakes, and metal ions in their
centers line up with one another to form a one-dimensional wire.

Many organic molecules can exist in two distinct stable states that differ in
some measurable property and are interconvertable. These could be switches of
molecular electronics. For example, bacteriorhodpsin, a bacterial pigment,
exists in two optical states: one state absorbs green light, the other orange.
Shinning green light on the green-absorbing state converts it into the orange
state and vice versa. Birge and his coworkers have developed high density memory
drives using bacteriorhodopsin.

Although the idea of using organic molecules may seem far-fetched, it happens
every day throughout nature. "Electron transport in photosynthesis one of the
most impor...

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