IBM’s breakthrough in micro-computing

NEW YORK: IBM said it used microscopic carbon molecules to emit light - a breakthrough some scientists say might one day make faster and smaller computers. Researchers at IBM have been studying tiny carbon nanotubes -- molecules resembling rolls of chicken wire that are 50,000 times narrower than a human hair. By engineering the carbon nanotube, IBM said it was able to not only conduct current, but to create light that could someday be used to transfer data. Light is the foundation for high-speed communications.

IBM, based in Armonk, New York, is publishing a report on its work in the May 2 issue of Science. David Tomanek, a physics professor at Michigan State University, compared the effect to a flashlight, in which communication occurs by turning on and off the light.

"Let's say it is a nanometer sized flashlight ... which can be switched on and off," Tomanek said, who said he has been working with IBM competitor NEC in Japan on similar topics. Light can carry more information per second than electrical wires, he said, which could perhaps in the distant future be used in computers for a quicker exchange of more information between a microprocessor and a memory chip.

There are still issues to be addressed and development is still at least 10 years away, said Phaedon Avouris, manager of nanocale science and technology at IBM Research. Scientists have been looking to replace silicon as the foundation for the microchips that power computers and other electronic devices, because they say in 10 to 15 years it will be impossible to improve silicon chip performance.

IBM currently makes chips based on silicon as does Intel Corp., the world's largest microprocessor maker. In addition to carbon nanotubes, scientists are looking at spintronics, or devices that rely on an electron's spin to perform their functions, and microelectro-mechanical sensors as replacements for silicon.

© Reuters