<p>The discovery, they said, could lead to cheaper, smaller and more powerful computers, the BBC reported.<br /><br />As electronics advance and demands for portability increase, one of the main challenges has been decreasing the size of elementary components.<br /><br />Technology firms have attempted to address this with a number of innovations, including new ways of building circuit tracks so signals do not suffer damaging interference at ultra small sizes.<br /><br />But the Northwestern University team, which detailed its work in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, took a different approach.<br /><br />“It’s becoming more and more challenging to make devices smaller and you need to think of new ways rather than just shrinking things down because you’re reaching a fundamental scientific limit here of how small you can make a device,” said David Walker, one of the researchers.<br /><br />“Our solution is instead of making things smaller, why don’t we try to make them more versatile — by taking all these hardware components and building them into one.<br />“Think of this as a Swiss army knife of computer hardware, so to speak, where you package a lot of different things all into one device.”<br /><br />To achieve this, the team created a new material that consists of a “sea” of small negatively charged particles and larger, positively charged particles, which are “jammed” in place.</p>
<p>The discovery, they said, could lead to cheaper, smaller and more powerful computers, the BBC reported.<br /><br />As electronics advance and demands for portability increase, one of the main challenges has been decreasing the size of elementary components.<br /><br />Technology firms have attempted to address this with a number of innovations, including new ways of building circuit tracks so signals do not suffer damaging interference at ultra small sizes.<br /><br />But the Northwestern University team, which detailed its work in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, took a different approach.<br /><br />“It’s becoming more and more challenging to make devices smaller and you need to think of new ways rather than just shrinking things down because you’re reaching a fundamental scientific limit here of how small you can make a device,” said David Walker, one of the researchers.<br /><br />“Our solution is instead of making things smaller, why don’t we try to make them more versatile — by taking all these hardware components and building them into one.<br />“Think of this as a Swiss army knife of computer hardware, so to speak, where you package a lot of different things all into one device.”<br /><br />To achieve this, the team created a new material that consists of a “sea” of small negatively charged particles and larger, positively charged particles, which are “jammed” in place.</p>