An article written by Dr. Hossam Haick of the Technion’s Faculty of Chemical Engineering, in cooperation with Prof. David Cahen of the Weizmann Institute, has been named the most read article of 2008 by the American Chemistry Society. The article entitled: “Contacting Organic Molecules by Soft Methods: Towards Molecule-Based Electronic Devices,” was published in the prestigious journal Accounts of Chemical Research in January 2008.

Building tiny electronic devices involves, in no small measure, connecting them to the macrometric world in order to enable interaction between the device and the user. Today, there is a wide range of reliable techniques for creating electrical contact to microelectronic devices (i.e. devices the size of a millionth of a meter). The use of these techniques, however, causes great destruction during creation of the electrical contact to the nano-electronic devices (that is – devices, the size of a billionth of a meter). Such devices will enable, for example, supercomputers the size of a sugar cube.

The article written by Dr. Haick and Prof. Cahen deals with the question of how to create electrical contacts to nanometric systems in a soft way without destroying them and/or their electrical effects. In this framework, the article presents what is desirable and what exists, and the advantages and disadvantages of the soft contact methods used today both from the scientific and the technological aspects. The article includes the authors’ personal opinion on the future of this field.