What is a molecular computer and has anyone ever made one?

Answer 1

You mean a computer made from molecules? Yes, nearly every computer is made of molecules. If you mean a computer that uses molecule sized components then Adleman is your man. He used DNA to do computation. Or perhaps the NMR computers built by DARPA that uses individual molecules as multi-qubit quantum logic gates. Of course these examples are full fledged computers they are more like dedicated circuits. By computer, I assume you mean a general purpose turing complete device. Then if that is actually what you mean, then no. No one has yet made a turing complete molecular computer. That being said, progress is being made.

Answer 2

Nano-machines, the molecular computer, is a part of the race among scientist and researchers to develop computers that operate on the molecular level.

Answer 3

I think you mean to ask, 'what is a QUANTUM computer?'

Theoretically, a quantum computer would use the quantum states of atoms as a replacement for logic gates that themselves are made up of many atoms/molecules. AND, NOR, NAND, XOR, etc. could be replaced UP and DOWN spin states or maybe electron cloud level configurations (s,p,d,f...) that could be interpreted memory states

Computers like this do not currently exist.

Answer 4

Liber at harvard and a team at Hewlett Packard have published results on computers made with nanoscale sized circuit elements. A group at Fuji-Xerox made a transistor from a single DNA molecule.

Answer 5

since all matter on the earth is made of molecules, every gosh darn computer (and other wonderful stuff) is made of those pesky little things. does that answer it? does that float your boat?