The emergence of nanotechnology brings with it the opportunity to manipulate materials at practically the molecular level. So, could a nanotech computer be built?

Robert Blick and colleagues in the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison think so. They propose a new type of electromechanical computer built from components a millionth the thickness of the human hair.

Mechanical? Before silicon chips or even transistors there were fictional dreams of levers, ratchets and cogs, complete with brass fittings that could solve mysteriers. Its imagery is very League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

But mechnical is just what the UW-Madison team have in mind - a fully mechanical computer based on electromechanical units, a billionth of a meter in size. These units could be tiny chunks of diamond or some other piezoelectric material.

They aren't complete Luddites, they would use current silicon chip manufacturing processes to create the units but they would operate by pushing and pulling on each other much like logic gates.

Yet these nano-electromechanical units will be one thousandth the size of a transistor so many more could be packed into the same space. More logic gates in less space means such a computer could eventually be faster than those based on silicon chips.

Higher voltage swing tolerances, lower power demands and fewer thermal issues means they could operate at much higher temperatures without the expensive and noise of elaborate cooling systems and survive electrical surges that would burn out a silicon chip, making survivability in extreme conditions much more likely.

According to the UW-Madision team, this breakthrough technology rather than an incremental change - revolution, not evolution - the technology exists to make the nano-electromechanical elements, they say.

Now they just have to do it.

More: New Journal of Physics