The carbon nanotubes and semiconductor nanowires that became available to scientists in the 1990s captured my imagination and attracted me to the field now called nanoelectronics. For an inorganic materials chemist like me, these newly discovered tiny building blocks were like Tinkertoys that could potentially be used to make all kinds of gadgets and widgets. The desire to build something, to invent new structures out of them, spoke to me as a chemist, and I've been fascinated by the possibilities of these new nanomaterials ever since.

Thanks to Moore's Law, however, the electronic devices produced by the conventional semiconductor process are now also "nanoelectronics." So what will be the role of new nanoelectronics based on chemically synthesized nanostructures, like carbon nanotubes and nanowires? Thermodynamics dictates that chemically synthesized nanostructures will probably never achieve the uniformity and perfection of electronic devices carved out of silicon crystals using conventional lithography. Rather, the strength of the new nanomaterials is in their chemical diversity and flexibility.