A Hybrid Route from CMOS to Nano and Molecular Electronics

The exponential increase of complexity of integrated circuits (ICs) has already (2005) allowed the production of approximately 10 µmol (≈ 6 × 1018) of transistors; if the current trend toward higher and higher integration continues, an Avogadro number of transistors will be manufactured in the next 20 years–in a way, microelectronics is already “molecular” electronics, if not for the transistor size for the number of transistors at least. Hence, the following question: Is there indeed a need of genuine molecular electronics?