Size Matters

The thickness of a single sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers.  So is the width of a human hair.  Thanks to scientists at Rice University and Hewlett-Packard, digital switches, an integral component of a computer chip’s memory, are now reliably being produced that are only 5 nanometers. 

This advancement is based on the potentially revolutionary finding that silicon oxide (SiO₂) can be modified into a nanocrystal resistor and work well in an environment that is completely metal free.  The original research paper was published this week in the ACS journal Nano Letters, and then quickly picked up by the New York Times.