However, researchers have found ways to align them closely and in regularly spaced rows and deposit them on silicon wafers with great precision. They then serve the crucial role of a semiconductor, allowing electrical current to be switched on and off in a computer circuit.

Image Carbon nanotubes are composed of a one-atom thick matrix of carbon atoms rolled into an infinitesimally small tube. Credit... IBM Research

Until now, however, they have been just one of a range of new materials that have been seen as candidates to replace silicon, which has for more than half a century been the material of choice for chip makers.

“Of all the possible materials, this one is at the top of the list by a long shot,” said Dario Gil, vice president for science and technology at IBM Research.

At the same time, he acknowledged that challenges remained in perfecting carbon nanotube transistors, but he said that IBM was increasingly confident that they could be overcome.

“By way of analogy, in the past we have had to carve in marble to create a statue,” Dr. Gil said, referring to the photolithographic etching process that is the standard industry manufacturing technique today. In the future, researchers are looking to materials that will “self-assemble.”

“With carbon nanotubes, you begin with dust and you have to find a way to assemble it into a statue,” he said.

Computer chips such as microprocessors are made up of vast interconnected arrays of transistors — tiny switches that can turn electrical flows on and off. Computer processors have become vastly more powerful because it has been possible to double the number of silicon transistors etched into silicon chips at two-year intervals for many decades. Today, modern microprocessors are composed of billions of switches capable of switching on and off in just billionths of a second.