Nanotechnology

[Guest guest]

Equipment and robots not visible to the naked eye, self-assembling molecules....science fiction? No - new technology. It also means more eliminated jobs and potentially much more.

Peace - Anna

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The era of nano-manufacturing is being born in hundreds of labs that are racing to perfect a technique called self-assembly

In this new world, atoms and molecules will gravitate toward one another and self-assemble into components -- and then, perhaps, into a computer or an artificial organ, says Benjamin Miller, a researcher at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y.

For now, making such complicated things this way is obviously science fiction. But the idea behind self-assembly is very much here, right now. Mother Nature has used self-assembly for eons to create and foster life. Mankind already uses it to make nonwrinkle trousers, fragrances, and silver polish. And it's used in microelectronics and for making anticorrosion coatings. And even in drugmaking, it's about to take off, says Mihail Roco, chair of the Nanoscale Science, Engineering & Technology Subcommittee of the National Science & Technology Committee, which coordinates the federal government's nanotech research and development efforts.

 

About one-quarter of the 2,000 or so nanotechnology projects the National Science Foundation now sponsors involve self-assembly -- and funding for nanotechnology should grow about 20% year-over-year, to $305 million, in fiscal 2005, says Roco. Total federal nanotech funding through a program called the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which Roco helps coordinate, should reach nearly $1 billion next year. .....NO LONGER IMPOSSIBLE. Even that figure is likely to be overshadowed by private funding. Everyone from drug companies such as Merck (MRK ) and Pfizer (PFE ) to tech whizzes 3M (MMM ), IBM (IBM ), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) is investing heavily in self-assembly.

 

SQUASHED BY A BUG. So, within five years, IBM will likely employ self-assembly to do the job. Last December, Big Blue demonstrated a flash-memory chip that had been created via self-assemly. IBM used special polymer molecules, derived from those found in styrofoam and plexiglass, to make transistors and connections that are one-tenth the size of today's, says Chuck Black, who leads IBM's self-assembly project.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_18/b3881609.htm

 

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