Chapter 4. Nanotechnology Commercialization: Transcending Moore s Law with Molecular Electronics and Nanotechnology

Chapter 4. Nanotechnology Commercialization: Transcending Moore's Law with Molecular Electronics and Nanotechnology

Steve Jurvetson

The history of technology is one of disruption and exponential growth, epitomized in Moore's Law and generalized to many basic technological capabilities that are compounding independently from the economy. More than a niche subject of interest only to computer chip designers, the continued march of Moore's Law will affect all sciences, just as nanotech will affect all industries. (We define Moore's Law in some detail a bit later in this chapter.)

Thinking about Moore's Law in the abstract provides a framework for predicting the future of computation and the transition to a new substrate: molecular electronics. An analysis of progress in molecular electronics provides a detailed example of the commercialization challenges and opportunities common to many nanotechnologies.