<div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:large">The reason some people were saying Moore's law is soon going to come to a end i<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​s​</div> because of quantum tunneling, when switches are very small and are supposed to be off there will still be electrons flowing through it, and this leakage current increases exponentially the smaller the switch gets. It had long been the consensus that nothing insulates against tunneling better than empty space so it places a limit on how small electronic circuits can get; but in the June 6 2018 issue of Nature this was shown to be untrue. A molecule has been found that insulated better than empty space and potentially much better; it does a good job even at distances of less the one nanometer. Even better the substance is silicon based, an element semiconductor manufacturers have a lot of experience with, so it could become commercially practical sooner than technologies that use some other element.</span><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><a href="https://engineering.columbia.edu/press-releases/quantum-interference-smaller-insulators" target="_blank">https://engineering.columbia.<wbr>edu/press-releases/quantum-<wbr>interference-smaller-<wbr>insulators</a><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0197-9" target="_blank">https://www.nature.com/<wbr>articles/s41586-018-0197-9</a><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"> John K Clark</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(28,28,28);font-family:'Source Sans Pro',Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px;line-height:22px"><br></span></div></div>