With semiconductors firmly entrenched in 40 nanometer production fabs and shooting straight for the low 20s, there doesn't seem like there's very much room left to keep shrinking. However, before the leap to quantum multi-state or even electron spin computing, there still lies the frontier of single molecules. Using single molecules as the tiny switches in microchips has been an idea kicked around for several years, but as NIST materials scientist Mariona Coll Bau explains, trying to assemble such chips using the standard metal vapor deposition technique does not pan out well; "Imagine what hot steam would do to your arm. Evaporated metal is much hotter, and organic switching molecules are very fragile—they can’t stand the heat."

Rather than attaching the molecules to a silicon surface and then depositing gold vapor and destroying the molecules, the NIST and University of Maryland team reversed the process. They first deposit the gold onto a super-smooth non-stick surface. This process actually has another benefit aside of not wreaking havoc on the fragile molecules -- previous deposition techniques created a very rough metallic surface which could either destroy the molecules or cause them to not connect to the conductor at all.

After the gold has cooled, they apply simple overhead transparencies as a laminate. This allows them to peel the gold from the non-stick base while leaving the smooth metal surface intact.

They then attach the molecules to be used as the switches to the gold conductor's surface and flip the whole thing over onto a new silicon base. An imprinting machine is used to compress the layers together without crushing the switches.

And this technique may not be useful for just future microchip manufacturing. Coll Bau indicated that it could also be useful for applications like biosensors, where the electronic world meets the organic to perform certain tasks.