Molecular electronics

Molecular electronics is the use of molecules as wires and other components in the construction of electronic circuitry.

A collaboration of researchers at HP and UCLA, led by James Heath, R. Stanley Williams, and Philip Kuekes, has been responsible for rapid advances in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the development of molecular electronics based on rotaxanes and catenanes.

Work is also being done on the use of single-wall carbon nanotubes as field-effect transistors. Most of this work is being done by IBM.

Molecular electronics is often used in science fiction to explain why so much usefulness can be packed into so small a space.