Prospects and Problems of Single Molecule Information Devices

Current information technologies use semiconductor devices and magnetic/optical discs, however, it is foreseen that they will all face fundamental limitations within a decade. This paper reviews the prospects and problems of single molecule devices, including switching devices, wires, nanotubes, optical devices, storage devices and sensing devices for future information technologies and other advanced applications in the next paradigm. The operation principles of these devices are based on the phenomena occurring within a single molecule, such as single electron transfer, direct electron-hole recombination, magnetic/charge storage and regand-receptor reaction. Four possible milestones for realizing the Peta (1015)-floating operations per second (P-FLOPS) personal molecular supercomputer are described, and the necessary technologies are listed. These include, (1) two terminal conductance measurement on single molecule, (2) demonstration of two terminal molecular device characteristics, (3) verification of three terminal molecular device characteristics and (4) integration of the functions of “molecular super chip”. Thus, 1000 times higher performance information technologies would be realized with molecular devices.