Seeking a radically new electronics

The integrated circuit created a multi-billion-dollar industry, revolutionizing consumer electronics, military systems, communications, computers, and our entire way of life. This electronics revolution has been fueled by the unrelenting miniaturization of transistors, which has permitted commensurate increases in the complexity and sophistication of integrated circuits. This paper discusses how continuing the electronics revolution into the next century will require a radical departure from the conventional types of electronic devices and circuits that we have used until now. One possibility is quantum-effect electronics. In this area of research, semiconductor structures are made small enough to exploit the quantum nature of electrons.