US Patent 7786467 - 3D nanowire crossbar

http://ip.com/patent/US7786467

As transistor scaling becomes more difficult and expensive the semiconductor industry is look for 3D topologies for the design of future memories and processors. This patent from HPLabs teaches one candidate based on nanowire crossbar layers. Claim 1 reads:

1. A three-dimensional nanoscale electronic device comprising:

a first functional layer including nanowires and a first type of nanowire junction; and

one or more additional functional layers, layered above the first functional layer, including nanowires and one or more additional types of nanowire junctions,

the first functional layer and one or more additional functional layers interconnected, in a direction approximately normal to planes of the first and one or more functional layers, through one or more of nanowires, nanowire junctions, microscale signal lines, and submicroscale signal lines.