Quantum Molecular Devices

Abstract

Miniaturization has been the driving force in contemporary technologies. However, two main obstacles limit further progress: additional reduction in size has reached its quantum limit, and lithography has reached its threshold. Future progress requires tackling three challenges: chemical synthesis of a complete device, active cooling for exploiting quantum characteristics, and quantum coherent control for operation. Chemical synthesis replaces the current top-bottom approach to manufacturing with bottom-up synthesis from elementary building blocks. New ultracold synthetic methods should be developed. An additional challenge is the active cooling of molecules, where the bottleneck is entropy removal. Notably, the current solution, namely, diffusion, is too slow. A coherent approach offers a possible solution; specifically, quantum coherent control is the method of choice for manipulating ultracold matter. Finally, the many degrees of freedom of molecules should be an asset that allows the design and implementation of complex tasks such as sensing communication and computing.