] NEW YORK %u2014 Researchers at IBM claim they have made
] an important breakthrough in the race to design circuitry
] at the molecular level: a system that works with existing
] methods of electronics manufacturing.
]
] In a paper being released Monday at an industry
] conference in Washington, D.C., IBM researchers Chuck
] Black and Kathyrn Guarini say they used a naturally
] occurring pattern of molecules as a stencil to etch flash
] memory circuitry into silicon.
]
] Other researchers are experimenting with using
] self-assembling, or naturally forming, patterns of
] molecules to build very tiny circuitry. Doing so is
] believed to be necessary if the high-tech industry can
] continue to pack more transistors into smaller spaces
] %u2014 the process that continually makes computing
] faster and less expensive.