International Cyberscope.(various; semiconductor industry, Internet developments)(Brief Article)

TECHNOLOGY

Chip Chemistry

When it comes to computer chips, smaller means cheaper, faster and better. One day engineers expect to reach the limit on how small they can make chips, and they'll need something new. Recently carbon nanotubes have emerged as the most promising alternative. One of these cylinders is only a billionth of a meter in diameter, roughly the size of a DNA molecule, and it conducts electricity like a tiny metal wire. Twist it just so, and it acts like a semiconductor--the stuff of computer chips.

But how to turn these molecular tubes into electrical circuits and, eventually, computers? Physicist Peter Hadley and his colleagues at Delft University in the Netherlands have taken an important first step. As they report recently in the journal Science, they managed to take nanotubes, mount them on silicon and attach little aluminum contacts. The result is working transistors, a building block of electrical circuits. The hope is ultimately to make nanotube computers without the expensive equipment and processes of current chipmaking. "The idea is to make some of the components chemically, rather than sculpting them from silicon," says Hadley. He's already been able to brew up nanotransistors, pour them over a surface and arrange them into useful patterns. The next step is to get the molecules to assemble themselves into circuits.

William Underhill

Betting on a Contender

Sales of computers and electronic gadgets are in the doldrums, with no end in sight. So why did Johnnie Chan, veteran venture capitalist at Tech Pacific in Hong Kong, put $1.6 million in Paion, a South Korean chip-design house--after Sept. 11? Because Paion serves a market that Chan believes will flourish even in a slump. Paion designs low-cost chips that link computers and other devices, even ...