Most electronics are made in the form of integrated circuits, which are tiny chips that contain transistors and other components etched onto silicon wafers.

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His group is trying to make nano-electrical components, and has built transistors based on tubes made of boron nitride.

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Instead of being fixed, a string of bits specifies the chip's design by telling it what linkages to forge between its various components (in this case, groups of transistors known as logic cells).

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As more and more components are packed on to chips - Intel recently launched a processor with two billion transistors, for example - the problems become worse.

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Such crystals might serve as components of optical switches which would, among other things, fulfill the role played by transistors in conventional electronics.

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To have a fully flexible finished product, both parts of the display have to be flexible - the optical frontplane and the backplane, where transistors are - as well as the device's battery, the outer shell, the touchscreen and other components.

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