Possible replacement for silicon-based chips found

By Terri Aquino
Daily Bruin Contributor

Using components no wider than a few atoms, UCLA professor James
Heath, along with Hewlett Packard, have patented a new process of
creating a small but energy efficient microchip that could replace
the silicon-based chips currently in computers.

“It can perform heavy computational power with the
equivalent of a tiny battery,” said Heath, director of the
California Nanosystems Institute.

There are many fundamental limitations to the patent, Heath
said, but others are optimistic for its future applications.

The new patent uses molecular principles to perform
computations, resulting in more efficiency than current chips, said
Grant Pan, a manager of the Microfabrication Instructional Lab in
the electrical engineering department.

Computers will be faster, more powerful and less expensive once
the microchips are made, Pan said, adding that the future of
science and the economy will be affected by the small chips.

For now, the nanochip’s projected uses are mainly related
to information technology, and generalizations for its uses cannot
be made yet, Heath said.

“I can’t promise that it will help your aching knee,
but CNI has seen (medical) links and is developing them,” he
said.

The new patent uses concepts from a molecular-based circuit that
Heath helped develop earlier.

“There are already some simple offshoots of this
technology,” Heath said. “(The companies) NanoSys and
HP have made plans to commercialize this technology, but it is a
toss-up as to when it will be available.”

The public should be able to see commercial and consumer use of
the nanochips within the next five years, Heath said.