Quantum Leaps:

As electronic components continue to shrink to nanoscale and beyond, engineers won’t be able to avoid the weird world of quantum mechanics--the bizarre behavior of all things atomic scale and smaller. And like Alice in Wonderland, computer components in quantumland will behave very differently from the familiar transistors and switches of today.

Now, the creation of the purest-ever gallium arsenide crystals should ease that inevitable transition by making quantum antics in semiconductors easier to see. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have created a crystal so pure that electrons race through unobstructed at a speed of 324,000 miles per hour. With only one foreign atom per 5 billion, that’s equivalent to a single sugar cube in a five-story building. And with so little interference, researchers can observe quantum behavior on a large scale, comparatively speaking--gaining insights into what the future has in store.

“We are trying to foresee what the difficulties will be,” said Weizmann physicist Mordehai Heiblum. “When we enter the quantum realm, [microelectronics] will not work the way they do today.”

Gallium arsenide is already a much-faster medium for electrons than silicon, and the Weizmann breakthrough gives them an added advantage.