An international team of scientists after 10 years of preparation for the first time measured the heat transfer by one molecule. Such a process opens the way to the creation of logical circuits capable of extending the effect of Moore's law and marks the beginning of a new generation of computers.

Moore's law began as an observation: the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years, doubling the computing power. However, in the end, the development of microelectronics has approached the threshold beyond which it is no longer possible to reduce the size of transistors. Molecular computers could overcome this threshold, but their implementation hinders a great deal - including heat transfer.

“Heat is a problem in molecular computation, because the two electronic components are, in fact, chains of atoms connecting two electrodes. When the molecule is heated, the atoms vibrate very quickly, and the chain can break, ”explained Edgar Meyhofer, a professor at the University of Michigan.

Until now, heat transfer along these molecules could not be measured, let alone controlled. But a group of scientists from the United States, Japan, Germany and South Korea conducted the first experiment in which they observed the speed of heat through a molecular chain, writes Science Daily.

Scientists have been preparing for such an experiment for almost ten years. They built a calorimeter with a gold electrode at the tip as thick as human hair, and almost completely isolated the device from the rest of the room to provide excellent thermal sensitivity. Then they heated the calorimeter to 20–40 degrees above room temperature and brought the two electrodes so close together that they almost touched each other, which allowed some chains of carbon atoms to connect to the calorimeter electrode.

Scientists have suggested that the freedom of heat movement at the nanoscale persists even when the molecular chain is much longer, 100 nm and more, that is, about 100 times longer than the 10-atom chain, which was tested in the experiment. Now researchers are thinking how to check it out.

nanonewsnet.ru