What’s after the transistor?

NYTimes.com : IBM researcher Frances Ross is growing a crop of mushroom-shaped silicon nanowires that may one day become a basic building block for a new kind of electronics.Nanowires are just one example, although one of the most promising, of a transformation now taking place in the material sciences as researchers push to create the next generation of switching devices smaller, faster, and more powerful than today’s transistors.The reason that many computer scientists are pursuing this goal is that the shrinking of the transistor has approached fundamental physical limits.