In
another important advance in the Israeli
nanotechnology industry, Prof. Ron Naaman
and his research group, from the Weizmann
Institute in Israel, have developed a new
method for creating ultra-small electrical
components. The team created a miniature "bridge" made
of carbon nanotubes connecting two tiny gold
contacts on a silicon surface (see image below).
This marks another step in the development
of nano electronics which many analysts see
as the next stage in the computer and electronics
industry.
Naaman and his team developed
the tiny electrical connection using DNA
strands that connected the carbon nanotubes
to the gold contacts. Using DNA as a basis
for nano engineering is not a new concept,
and the Weizmann team is not the first to
try this approach, but their method appears
to be the most suitable to date for large-scale
production and the development of a variety
of industrial applications.
One other application, apart
from the nano transistors, might be nano-scale
biological and chemical sensors. Using the
DNA's unique ability to attach itself to
certain molecules the new technique might
allow the creation of highly specialized
nano sensors that will prove valuable to
both the medical and the industrial community.
For now, the team still
has a lot of work ahead of them. Currently
they have managed to create only nanotransistors
with ten percent of the available gold contact
pairs, hardly enough for commercial application,
but they are hard at work improving these
numbers. |
