US Patent 7544977 - Nanoscale/Microscale interface

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7544977.html

Over the past 10 years Hewlett-Packard has been developing nanoscale crossbar circuit architectures as a platform for molecular electronics which may be applicable to their new memristor designs. However, there is some difficulty in addressing these nanoscale structures with wires formed using conventional microlithography due to incompatibility in the size of the wiring. This patent teaches an integration approach based on a multi-layered structure with interconnection pins. Claim 1 reads:

1. A nanoscale/microscale interface comprising:

a predominantly microscale layer with a surface having regularly patterned pins; and

a predominantly nanoscale layer comprising an ordered arrangement of pad-interconnected nanowire units, a first pad of a pad-interconnected nanowire unit overlying a first pin of the predominantly microscale layer to electrically interconnect the first pin to a second pin through a pad-interconnected nanowire unit overlying the second pin and connected to the first pad-interconnected nanowire unit through a conductive nanowire junction.