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Imagine two ultrathin gold wires that are in intermittent mechanical contact with one another. As the individual gold atoms come in and out of contact, the electrical resistance between the wires jumps fleetingly by discreet amounts. Now, researchers in Japan have harnessed this simple phenomenon to build a nano-scale mechanical switch. The device, built by Kazuya Terabe and coworkers at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), ICORP-SORST/Japan Science and Technology Agency and RIKEN, may ultimately replace semiconductor switches in the electronic devices of the future (Nature 433 47–50).
Peter J. Burke (Tue,) studied this question.