Nano bridge builds logic

The researchers have devised a nanoscale mechanical switch that works by rapidly creating and destroying a minuscule metal bridge between a pair of wires positioned just one nanometer apart. A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter, or the span of 10 hydrogen atoms.
The researchers' device, dubbed the quantized conductance atomic switch, could one day be used to form electronic circuits and memory devices, and could be manufactured on silicon computer chips, said Hasegawa.
... Because the switches are so tiny, they operate in the realm of quantum physics, which opens the possibility of using the switch to make a multi-bit memory device, according to Hasegawa. In the realm of atoms and subatomic particles, the rules of physics are different from the everyday world. Unlike that of larger switches, the electrical conductance through the researchers' tiny switch is quantized, meaning it increases or decreases by discrete amounts. A pair of the switches can represent as many as 16 values, or 4 bits, according to Hasegawa.