According to a New York Times report, several research groups are working to create basic computing components of ultra-microscopic scale.

A group of researchers at Hewlett-Packard and the University of California at Los Angeles in July said that they had succeeded in developing rudimentary electronic logic gates - the basic component of computing - that were the thickness of a single molecule.

However, the achievement was marred by the group's inability to switch back the molecular gate though it could be made to move into open and shut positions.

Researchers at Yale and Rice universities are also working to improve the molecular gates and plan to report it in the journal Science in a few weeks, it said.

The Yale-Rice team has already reported construction of molecular-scale switches that can be repeatedly opened and shut - a necessary step in representing zeros andones, the basic binary signals used in the circuitry of digital transistors.

Hewlett-Packard scientists had also reported success in a step necessary to move towards creating rows of conductive wires that are less than a dozen atoms across - a critical part of hooking together the molecule-sized switches that could one day result in computers vastly faster than today.

If researchers were also able to develop molecular memory devices, vast storage capacity would be available for just pennies in cost, the NYT said.

Further improvements in the Silicon-based micro-electronic devices could reduce their size to as small as 0.10 micron.

The report said researchers in molecular electronics were optimistic that they would be able to create chemical reactions that "self-assemble" vast numbers of molecular-scale circuits at infinitesmal cost.