For several years now, researchers around the world have fashioned tiny nanowires from carbon nanotubes. Now though, Harvard University nanotech pioneer Charles Lieber and his team have made a nanowire–10,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper–that contains a string of transistors. While traditional nanowires are notoriously difficult to connect with each other or conventional silicon electronics, Lieber's nanocircuits are essentially pre-wired. The work was reported in the journal Nature and summarized in an article on the magazine's Web site:
"At this stage the chain does not actually do anything useful. 'But it's an important proof of principle,' says Lieber. He says that by applying a more elaborate mask to a woven network of silicon nanowires it should be possible to create complex circuits in one go.
To prove his point, he hopes to make a much more sophisticated structure that can perform complex calculations. 'We're trying to make a programmable series of literally thousands of these transistors.'
