Molecular electronics researchers are converging on viable circuit-fabrication methods. A Hewlett-Packard and UCLA team are tackling one universal problem with molecular circuits: the inherent defects created by any chemical reaction. They’re designing a molecular equivalent of an FPGA (floating point gate array) that can be used to implement a redundant wiring scheme in which defective cells are simply switched out of the network.

The team is also working on the I/O problem, with a patent on a means for multiplexing between CMOS-level signals used in conventional electronics devices and molecular signals.