Biochip is the result of marriage of microchips business with biotechnology. In future, there is the possibility of developing of biological computers.
Until the development of silicon microchips, setting up of computers was very costly and space occupying. but recently, one can have a computer to be fit on desktop. These affordable prices are mainly due to the development of silicon microchips which brought into a rapid revolution in technology. Further reduction in size of computers and improvement in computing powers will not be possible because the silicon microchip technology has certain limitations as below:
i) There is inherent limit beyond which circuits cannot be squezed onto a silicon chip. For example the width of the circuit cannot be shorter than the wavelength of light. Light is used to etchout circuits during the manufacturing of silicon chips.
ii) Close pricing beyond a limit of many electrical circuits on the same microchip results in 'electron tunnelling' which creates short circuits ruining the whole system.
iii) After cramming together of a large number of circuits, heat is generated by the electric current. This may cause total failure of the system.
The development of biochips is a major thrust of the rapidly growing biotechnology industry, which encompasses a very diverse range of research efforts including genomics, proteomics, computational biology, and pharmaceuticals, among other activities. Advances in these areas are giving scientists new methods for unraveling the complex biochemical processes occurring inside cells, with the larger goal of understanding and treating human diseases. At the same time, the semiconductor industry has been steadily perfecting the science of microminiaturization. The merging of these two fields in recent years has enabled biotechnologists to begin packing their traditionally bulky sensing tools into smaller and smaller spaces, onto so-called biochips. These chips are essentially miniaturized laboratories that can perform hundreds or thousands of simultaneous biochemical reactions. Biochips enable researchers to quickly screen large numbers of biological analytes for a variety of purposes, from disease diagnosis to detection of bioterrorism agents.