Nanoscale Digital Devices Based on the Photoelectrochemical Photocurrent Switching Effect: Preparation, Properties and Applications

New materials and new phenomena which can be used for information processing always inspire great enthusiasm. On the other hand, silicon is still the main workhorse of modern electronics. Production of bulk quantities of ultrapure silicon is relatively cheap and the processing technologies are extremely sophisticated. Introduction of new materials and phenomena, on the other hand, requires an enormous amount of hard experimental and theoretical work. The photoelectrochemical photocurrent switching effect (PEPS) is one of the processes that, in principle, can evolve into new information processing technology. This review presents the effect itself, along with preparation of appropriate semiconducting materials, physical principles of semiconductor-molecule interactions, and finally some prototypical constructions of logic devices based on the PEPS effect.