The electron source of choice is another new piece of microtechnology, the carbon nanotube.
As such, it possesses the novel mechanical properties of carbon nanotube-like tensile strength--in addition to high electrical conductivity.
The particle's position thus altered the nanotube's electrical resistance on a local scale.
In essence, Quasam can be thought of as a carbon nanotube that has been sliced open and laid flat.
While there have been significant accomplishments in CNT circuits over the years, they have come mostly at the single-nanotube level.
ENGADGET: Stanford engineers find work around for barriers to carbon nanotube computers
When the first rudimentary nanotube transistors were demonstrated in 1998, researchers imagined a new age of highly efficient, advanced computing electronics.
ENGADGET: Stanford engineers find work around for barriers to carbon nanotube computers
The team is evaluating several ways to add more nanotube layers and make them even thinner to boost the power output.
By running electricity through them the team can measure how much current flows through the gaps coated with the nanotube scribble.
Nanotube circuits could provide a ten-times improvement in energy efficiency over silicon.
ENGADGET: Stanford engineers find work around for barriers to carbon nanotube computers
This year also brought us several steps closer to nanotube computing, as many research groups developed new ways to custom design nanotubes.
The nanotube is a straight line with almost no depth or width.
The third technique, being developed by Prashant Kamat of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and his colleagues, uses that fashionable scientific tool, the carbon nanotube.
Military satellites and other electronic devices using carbon nanotube semiconductors will be able to withstand solar flare-ups and nuclear radiation from attacks that often corrupt data in standard chips.
Seung Mi Lee of South Korea's Kunsan University and her team announced a nanotube material at the conference that, they claimed, could store more than 14% of its own weight of hydrogen.
Dr Zettl and his colleagues constructed their memory cell by taking a particle of iron just a few billionths of a metre (nanometres) across and placing it inside a hollow carbon nanotube.
For instance, Motorola 's (nyse: MOT - news - people ) carbon nanotube TVs are ready to leave the lab and hit the market, outperforming today's flat panel displays and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) is leading the way to nanoscale computing.
While this technology still has a long way to go, challenges such as NASA's October 21 First Annual Space Elevator Competition at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley are spurring design teams to push the limits of both their robots and the super-strong, carbon nanotube-based ribbons that are key to supporting them.
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