IBM builds circuits out of molecular dominoes

from the cool-things-to-do-with-an-STM dept.
Mr_Farlops writes "Researchers at IBM have built and operated the world's smallest working computer circuits using carbon monoxide molecules that move across an atomic surface like toppling dominoes. Unfortunately, these circuts are assembled by moving one molecule at a time using an ultra-high-vacuum, low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope. It takes several hours to set up the most complicated cascades. Since there is no reset mechanism, these molecule cascades can only perform a calculation once. We're not quite there yet but, the development is interesting."