Switching the polyacetylene soliton

Molecular electronic devices offer a way to make electronic circuits thousands of times smaller by building them up from the chemical realm, using small groups of atoms to form electrical switches. Single strands, only a few atoms thick, of the electrically conductive plastic polyacetylene could be used to interconnect these switches. Electrons are considered to travel down polyacetylene strands as solitons. This paper presents a number of simple chemical structures for the soliton switch. The advent of these simple structures makes it reasonable to consider making soliton switches, which is the first step towards soliton circuits. Designs for simple logic gates and a memory cell based on the soliton switch are also presented here, to illustrate the general usefulness of soliton switches in forming digital electronic devices.