ABSTRACT
Cell phones are becoming tinier, laptops are getting lighter, and a thin strand of optical žber is replacing thick bundles of copper telephone wire. Meanwhile, products do more with less. is is a central tenet and the primary motivation for miniaturization; for with miniaturization comes multifunctionality. Consider what happens when two di•erent products can each be made half their size. A cell phone becomes part digital camera, part music player. A wristwatch keeps track of your schedule and your heart rate (let alone the time). When we marry devices this way, new, multifunctional products are born. e functional density-or the number of functions a product has per volume-improves exponentially with smaller parts. Consider the ramižcations for functionality o•ered by molecular-scale electronics, which would be about 100 times smaller across than today’s computer transistors. is 100-fold improvement on the linear size scale translates into 1003 by volume, meaning that one million times more circuitry could be stu•ed into the same volume.
