Silicon's Reign as King of Semiconductors There is a revolution fomenting in the semiconductor industry. It may take 30 years or more to reach perfection, but when it does the advance may be so great that today's computers will be little more than calculators compared to what will come after. The revolution is called molecular electronics, and its goal is to depose silicon as king of the computer chip and put carbon in its place. The perpetrators are a few clever chemists trying to use pigment, proteins, polymers, and other organic molecules ....