of electrons through barriers made from matter or electric fields, will begin to

dominate the essential effects

that permit a mass-action semiconductor device to operate [271]. Nonetheless, to
maintain the current rate of
advance in computer speed and information storage capacity, there must be continued
increases in the density of
computational elements on integrated circuit chips. This
seems to mandate continued decreases in size for the transistor. Thus, it is
evident that a change in the technology
of the transistor will be necessary.
Still, an electronic nanocomputer will continue to represent information in the
storage and movement of electrons. To perform these functions on ever smaller
scales
a range of device technologies have been proposed to
modify or replace the conventional microelectronic transistor. There are single-
electron transistors that are in
many ways similar to today�s microelectronic transistors, especially in their
switching and amplification processes [157,192]. Although these devices operate by
the
movement of single electrons, they are not �quantumeffect� devices because they
have high resistances intentionally designed to destroy quantum interference
effects among the many electrons that occupy the volume
of the device [193].
However, many of the devices that are the most widely
investigated and discussed as nanometer-scale replacements for the transistor do
employ quantum interference
and tunneling�i.e., some of the same quantum effects that
prevent much further shrinkage or �scaling� of bulk-effect
transistors [27]. Quantum dots (or �artificial atoms�)
govern tunneling of a small number of electrons through
the influence of an electric field from a nearby gate electrode [158,248,249,306].
Present-day quantum dots can
be made as small as 30 nanometers [231,290]. In the future, they are likely to be
made even smaller. Also, the
quantum dot devices are sensitive to and can take advantage of the presence or
absence of the charges of single
electrons. Other electronic nanodevices that take advantage of quantum mechanical
effects, such as resonanttunneling devices, also have been proposed, fabricated,
and used in experiments [57,110,271].
Still smaller molecular-scale electronic devices may be
possible [140,232]. One of the first examples of a specific proposal for a
molecular-scale electronic device was
a rectifier proposed by Aviram and Ratner in 1974 [13].
The rectifier consisted of a single molecule that would
demonstrate almost ideal diode characteristics in passing
current preferentially in one direction. More recently, a
molecular shift register that operates based on electron
transfer has been proposed [142,311], a Japanese group
has simulated atomic-scale switches [309], and a molecular �shuttle� switch has
been synthesized [46]. Also,
Drexler and Merkle have suggested a more radical construct that they term helical
logic to be based upon the
helical, atomic-scale motions of electrons in an applied,
rotating electric field [217].