A TINY light switch has been made from a single molecule by chemists in
Italy. It works in a different way to other molecular switches and could be a
step on the road to building a chemical computer.
“Switching mechanisms like these could be used in computers with
molecule-sized logic gates,” says Luigi Fabbrizzi, who led the team at the
University of Pavia. “Molecules like ours could one day form the basis of a
`wet’ computer—one whose circuit elements are chemicals in solution.”
Fabbrizzi’s light switch is an example of a bistable molecule: it can exist
in two different…
