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Nanotechnology: Where Small is All
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 hink your Pentium 4 or iMac G4 is hot stuff? What if you could get more speed and memory from a supercomputer no bigger than a grain of salt? What if video games could deliver virtual reality on a big-screen TV no thicker than a few sheets of paper?
Let’s get really radical: Can you see yourself like baseball great Ted Williams, in the deep freeze until the day tiny robots can race through your body and fix whatever caused the state we now—however shortsightedly—view as death?
Welcome to nanotechnology, a world where small presents huge possibilities. Where handheld devices that instantly diagnose illness a la “Star Trek” are not a far-off fantasy, where molecules can be fashioned to gobble up pollution, where chemical-biological “chips” detect food-borne contamination or chemical warfare agents in the air, where the blind can see and the paralyzed can walk.
Science fiction? We are tantalizingly close to many of those scenarios. Nanotechnology experts believe we stand at the dawn of a nano-revolution that could make the computer-driven technology revolution seem like the Dark Ages. Certainly, nanotechnology will change the face of electronics.
What is nanotechnology, anyway? Nano comes from the Greek word for small, or dwarf. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Nanometers are so tiny that 150,000 of them could be spread across the diameter of a strand of hair. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of molecules and atomic particles to produce new materials and processes.
“We’re talking about building things from the very starting point, making them where you want to make them with the properties you want,” says Prof. Steve Fonash, director of the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility and professor of engineering sciences. “We’re really trying to imitate nature. It’s very exciting.”
(Courtesy of National Science Foundation)
Hang it on a Wall:
Nano-TVs Race to Market
 lready, many nanoproducts are in use. Clay nanoparticles make plastic beer bottles less likely to shatter and help seal in carbon dioxide to keep carbonated drinks fresh. General Motors uses a similar nanocomposite to strengthen plastic running boards in its Safari and Astro vans. Glass manufacturers have introduced "self-cleaning" window glass with a surface layer of nanoscale titanium dioxide particles. Sunscreens with titanium oxide nanopowder reflect ultraviolet light without being visible on the skin. Silver nanocrystals in wound dressings kill microbes and reduce inflammation.
Even that “Star Trek” tri-corder isn’t so
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MITRE's Millirobot is the size of a fly
(Courtesy of The MITRE Corporation)
 far from realization. A handheld device now in development would make quick diagnoses from a small sample of a patient’s blood, saliva, or urine using nanocrystals designed to go after certain disease markers.
If you haven’t yet bought a nanotech product, you soon will. NanoBusiness Alliance, an industry advocacy group, says existing nanoproducts generate $45.5 billion a year in sales worldwide and may reach $200 billion by 2006. The U.S. government alone is spending millions of dollars a year through its Nanotechnology Initiative, which funnels research money to universities and other institutions to spur development and education.
Exotic uses of nanotechnology may be years in the making. Not so in the consumer electronics market, where the race is on to produce new flat-panel televisions by late next year.
Tiny but mighty carbon atoms are the magic genies behind the 40- and 50-inch flat-panel color televisions major electronics companies expect to have ready in time for the 2003 holiday buying season. The high-resolution TVs will retail at about $1,500 to $2,000 and deliver bright, crisp images with an almost 3-D effect in a super-thin package that weighs only about 10 pounds, says Daniel T. Colbert, vice president for major development strategies at Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. in Houston, Texas.
The company produces the essential ingredient for the new TV technology: single-wall carbon nanotubes, which are carbon atoms connected in a tube shape that is closed at both ends. Nanotubes are only a nanometer in diameter. Excellent conductors of electricity and 100 times stronger than steel, they are superb electrical fields. They act like lightning rods to direct electrons to the display screen at very low voltage with exceptional efficiency.
That means the new televisions lack the weight, heat, and power consumption of older cathode ray tube displays. In a cathode ray tube, used for years in television and computer monitors, a heated filament (cathode) inside a glass tube sends a stream of electrons (ray) to a phosphor-coated screen (the wide end of the tube). The phosphor atoms glow, producing the image. The bigger the screen, the longer the tube must be so the electron ray has enough length to reach all parts of the screen. That makes big-screen CRTs bulky and heavy. Ultimately, designers expect that TVs using nanotubes will be only as thick as a few pieces of paper. They can be hung on, or perhaps even embedded in, walls.
If you think that’s cool, take a look at what’s happening in computing.
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Nano-Electronic Computers:
Molecules with a Charge
 s your computer out of date? Probably. About 18 months after a computer chip is brought to the marketplace a new one with roughly twice the number of transistors is ready to replace it. But because of fundamental physical limits, it’s becoming more difficult to shrink electronic devices made of conventional silicon-based semiconductors. So, scientists are trying to create memory and integrated circuits on the molecular level.
How? At the MITRE Corporation, which is involved in government research and not commercial computer applications, the challenge is to find electrically conductive molecules, then figure out how to make and assemble them into larger structures so that they will compute as an integrated whole, according to Dr. James C. Ellenbogen, senior principal scientist of MITRE’s nanosystems group.
MITRE was among the first to design computer circuits constructed from molecular switches and wires. The company’s government-sponsored project on molecular-scale electronics expects to unveil a prototype nanocomputer memory device in 2004. The memory device is like a tiny checkerboard, with each square containing a memory cell that is only 30 nanometers by 30 nanometers. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lucent, Motorola, Siemens, and Hitachi also have molecular electronics research and development programs, as do some universities.
Are you interested in robots? You probably haven’t seen anything like MITRE’s fly-sized walking milli-robot, which will be controlled by a network of nanocomputers, each smaller than a grain of salt. Milli-robots are a step toward having even smaller micro-robots and, ultimately, nanoscale machines that would assemble molecules into desired structures. Ellenbogen says that eventually computers will be incorporated into materials, just as color is incorporated into objects like clothing, appliances, and cars.
“Computation will literally become a property of matter,” he says, built seamlessly into the very fabric of everyday objects. Materials would be “programmed” to have certain features and characteristics as we learn to emulate the work of nature’s highly evolved computer, the cell, to create structures down to the tiniest molecule.
Scientists and engineers would be able to manipulate cell proteins to make other, non-living structures—a process that, while biologically inspired, it is not itself biological, Ellenbogen emphasizes. “We’re not talking about re-creating life out of the test tube. These are artificial structures. This is quite benign.”
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Made to Order:
Where will Nano Lead?
nd yet, as chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, biology, and cognitive science converge in the effort to control matter at its fundamental level, questions inevitably arise as to just where that road will lead. If we can manipulate the very building blocks of nature,what next? Can our world literally be made to order? “Certainly, long term there are some real societal questions to be asked,” says Mark Modzelewski, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance. “You’re opening up nature’s toolbox and being able to see things, anticipate and manipulate atoms and molecules the way nature does. There’s nothing that prevents us from creating things in the same manner nature does once we get that good.”
How will nanotech help you over the next few years? The National Science Foundation, in a June 2002 report entitled, “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance,” says that over the next decade or two you may see these developments:
cosmetics that change with the user’s moods;
wearable computers and environmental sensors that will adapt to changing situations; clothing that automatically adjusts to changing temperature and weather conditions;
machines directed by human thought, transforming work efficiency, manufacturing, learning, arts, and sports;
chemical-biological “chips” to detect food-borne contamination, dangerous substances in the blood, or chemical warfare agents in the air and to search for life during NASA space missions;
buildings with external surfaces that could automatically change shape and color to adjust to different temperatures, lighting, wind, and precipitation;
nanotechnology-based implants to replace human organs, and treatments for disabilities like paralysis or blindness.
As for Ted Williams—now in “cryonic suspension” in liquid nitrogen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz.—that’s another matter. Alcor acknowledges that the baseball slugger could spend up to 100 years in the deep freeze before a sophisticated cell repair technology exists. Resuscitation would require advanced nanotechnology to make the tiny devices capable of repairing a person’s body, as well as advanced computers to direct them.
Even if today’s patients are successfully revived, Alcor warns that they may “emerge with varying degrees of amnesia.” But who knows? By then, nanotechnology may well have found an answer to that problem, too.
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Meet this Xtra Nano Student
 ouble homework on the Fourth of July. Boot camp with a world-class mathematician. Long summer days filled with futuristic theories for controlling the very building blocks of nature.
Not your typical summer vacation? Meet Alex Wissner-Gross. Nothing about this 20-year-old New Yorker, least of all his passion for science and math, is typical.
A triple major (physics, electrical engineering, and math) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alex has already invented a micro-assembly technique—now patented—that could make it possible to mass produce computers so small you may have a hard time seeing them.
His high school’s valedictorian, Alex has a perfect grade-point average at college and a bevy of national awards and credentials. This year, for example, he won first place in the Intel Research Award for Undergraduate Students; at the award symposium he presented a paper entitled “Nanoscale Patterns and Networks Made by Molecular Rulers Grown on Dot Arrays Formed by Nanosphere Lithography,” based on research he did at the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility in the summer of 2001.
If you don’t understand what that is (it has to do with connecting molecular-scale devices), you’re not alone. If your resume doesn’t look like Alex’s, don’t feel bad. His achievements to date dwarf what many accomplish in a lifetime.
Is Alex the perfect student? Maybe. Or maybe simply a sterling example of the fact that—as one of Alex’s mentors, James C. Ellenbogen at the MITRE Corporation, puts it—“students can do more than most people expect.”
Yes, but how did Alex’s prodigious talent come about?
Fanning the Spark...
“It was very nurtured,” says his mom, Elizabeth Wissner-Gross. At a physics museum during a family trip to Switzerland many years ago, she remembers that the 10-month-old Alex was so captivated by the exhibit known as “Jacob’s Ladder”—a spark between electrodes creates ever-lengthening arcs of “lightning”—that he threw a fit each time the curator tried to turn the demonstration off.
Alex has heard that story many times, of course, and seems slightly embarrassed by it, in the way students are embarrassed when parents proudly display baby pictures and the like. But he is quick to give his parents credit for creating opportunities to spark whatever nascent interest he had.
“My parents were always very encouraging and always got us enrichment activities,” he says. “Consequently, during my science classes in elementary school I knew a lot, and that started a cycle where I felt confident and wanted to learn even more.”
Birthday parties were held at local Long Island science museums, where he visited most weeks for after-school learning opportunities. Family trips celebrated that interest—which, incidentally, Alex’s younger brother Zachary shares.
“We’ve been to probably every major science museum in the world,” Elizabeth Wissner-Gross says. “It’s fun for everybody.”
More than museum trips provided the foundation for Alex’s extraordinary accomplishments. As a young child, he loved to watch the Public Broadcasting Service’s “Nova.” As he grew older, he went to summer computer camps, entered math and science competitions, participated in national programs for gifted and talented students. In middle school, he gobbled up every science class his school had to offer.
Total Immersion...
t 15, Alex attended a summer program of intensive math and number theory at Ohio State University under the tutelage of Arnold Ross, a legendary and widely revered mathematician. (Typical problem: How many square roots of -1 are there in Zm for m=3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 65?) The program was a complete math immersion. There were no days or nights off, no television. Homework doubled on weekends and even the Fourth of July.
By 16, Alex was a student employee at the MITRE Corporation, working for Ellenbogen, the principal scientist for MITRE’s nanosystems group. Alex, says Ellenbogen, “transcended everyone’s expectation, my own included.”
“He’s proven to be a very, very exceptional talent, and we did some important things together,” Ellenbogen says. “I’m very proud to count him as a collaborator.”
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Chief among Alex’s accomplishments at MITRE was the proposal of an assembly technique in which high-frequency oscillation is used to assemble sub-millimeter particles into thousands of tiny finger-like patterns. These “fingers,” all working together, potentially could manipulate many molecular-scale objects—perhaps making it possible to mass-produce nanoelectronic computers. MITRE patented the system and listed Alex as the sole inventor.
(Courtesy of The MITRE Corporation)
Alex Wissner-Gross, then a high school student, at the 1999 Intel Science Talent Search awards with Dr. James C. Ellenbogen, senior principal scientist at the MITRE Corporation's nanosystems group. Alex was one of Intel's Top 10 winners for the micro-assembly technique he invented while working for Ellenbogen as a student employee in the nanosystems group.
Not surprisingly, Alex was admitted to top universities, but there was never any doubt about his decision—he’d always wanted MIT. Pursuing three majors may sound overwhelming, but for Alex it is supremely logical, since nanotechnology is nothing if not interdisciplinary. The nanocosm is a place in which biology, physics, chemistry, and engineering converge, where the prospect of controlling the very building blocks of matter sparks visions of solving many of the world’s ills.
“Some see nanotechnology as controlling atoms at a small scale,” Alex says. “I see it as part of a larger trend toward fundamental engineering, where we’re going to control at the fundamental level particles and patterns we see in nature.”
With such weighty implications for his life’s work, Alex easily turns aside questions about whether he ever wished for more relaxing, less mentally challenging summers during his high school years.
“I’ve spent every summer as wisely as I could,” he says. “I didn’t spend any summers hanging around.”
More Xtra Curricular
Fun stuff for grades K-12
www.nano.gov/kids.htm
For more information on nanotechnology in consumer products visit the January/February issue of Visions, a publication of the Consumer Electronics Association.
Complete, easy-to-understand explainers of nanotechnology and its potential applications:
The National Nanotechnology Initiative:
what the federal government is doing through the
National Science Foundation
www.nano.gov
Examples of courses on nanoscale science
and engineering offered at U.S. universities
www.nano.gov/courses.htm
Recommended academic websites:
In-depth coverage of the nanotechnology industry
http://news.nanoapex.com
www.smalltimes.com
www.nanotechweb.org
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Xtra Real People
 Name: Dr. Ralph C. Merkle, age 51
Title: Nanotechnology Theorist (Zyvex Corporation), Vice President of Technology Assessment (Foresight Institute).
Company: Zyvex Corporation is a Richardson, Texas company working to develop nanotechnology products and services for commercial use.
The Foresight Institute is a non-profit organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that promotes nanotechnology research and education.
His real job: Thinks about what devices and processes could be possible through nanotechnology and creates computerized, 3-D models to figure out whether those theories work.
Why he chose this career: “When I was young I was supposed to become a doctor. I went off to college and found I was taking a computer science class and enjoying it thoroughly and said, ‘Why don’t I do that?’ I followed my nose, as it were. In the mid to late-80s, I was struck by the fact that nanotechnology could have a major impact on the world.”
Invention: Helped invent public key cryptography, which is what keeps Internet communications and purchases secure from unauthorized observers.
School: B.A. Computer Science,1974 and M.S. Computer Science, 1977, both from University of California, Berkeley; PhD, Electrical Engineering, Stanford, 1979.
What he does for fun: Bicycling around Silicon Valley.
Advice: “Nanotechnology is an ideal opportunity for high school students because it’s an exciting area that is growing rapidly. The opportunities stretch out for decades. The opportunities for people charting out their careers are immense.”
Get a good grounding in the sciences—chemistry, mechanical engineering, physics. Get a copy of Engines of Creations, the 1986 book by K. Eric Drexler about nanotechnology. (It can be read online at www.foresight.org/EOC without charge.) Students should also see the “For Students” section at www.foresight.org/NanoRev/FIFAQ.html.
Driving Force: “The purpose of science is to better the human condition. With nanotechnology we will be able to interact with and repair the molecular and cellular structure, whose damage is the root cause of disease. This will lead to a revolution in medicine and will have enormous impact well beyond the remarkable advances in computer technology that are going to be generated by nanotechnology. We’re looking at something that’s going to radically change our way of life for the better.”
Predictions: “Nanotechnology will replace our entire manufacturing base with a new, radically more precise, radically less expensive, and radically more flexible way of making products. We’re looking at a whole range of developments that will be greater in overall impact than the Industrial Revolution.”
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OK, so you’re not Alex…
 ou haven’t been to every science museum in the world, you haven’t invented anything, and you don’t have a perfect grade-point average. But you think nanotechnology is pretty cool, and you might want to pursue a career in physics, electrical engineering, nano-biotechnology, or a related science. Is it too late to prepare yourself for college? Will a top school want you?
Here are some things you can do. (Many of these ideas come from Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, Alex’s mother, who learned so much about preparing her two sons for science careers that she’s now a paid higher education consultant.)
NSTEP'S "TechXplore" is a high - impact education program and competition that connects teams of students with technology professionals from electronics, telecomm-unications, and high-tech companies to explore the world of technology. Go to www.techxplore.org
Take every science course you can in high school, and don’t make the mistake of avoiding math courses. If you don’t get a solid foundation in mathematics, you won’t be able to handle physics and other advanced sciences. Take Advanced Placement courses, if they’re offered and if you can handle the work load.
If your school doesn’t have the science courses to suit you, check out colleges and universities in your area and see what you can take at night or on the weekends.
Enter school math and science competitions. Check out national competitions, too. For mathematics competitions, see www.promys.org, the web site for Boston University’s summer mathematics program. Information on the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search is at www.intel.com/education/sts.
For information about summer programs, go to Science Service’s directory (www.sciserv.org/stp) of more than 300 science, mathematics, and engineering enrichment programs for pre-college students and teachers. (Science Service is a non-profit organization that encourages students, parents, teachers, and communities to explore science.) You can search for programs by state, grade level, financial aid, and special interest group.
If a family vacation will take you near a big research laboratory, call ahead to see if the lab gives tours and work that into your trip. Some government laboratories doing nanotechnology work are listed at www.wtec.org/loyola/nanobase, a database of academic, industry and government nanotechnology research.
Use the Loyola database above to find out what labs, businesses or corporations are doing work in the field you’re interested in and contact them about summer internship opportunities. Information on the MITRE Corporation’s student program (usual age range is students from 16 to 20, but this is flexible) is at www.mitre.org.
Check out Penn State’s three-day summer “nano camps” for middle and high school students interested in nanotechnology. See www.nanofab.psu.edu/events.
Enlist your parents. They’d probably like to help you research programs and scholarships and work on the application paperwork.
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The NanoBusiness Alliance, headquartered in New York City, is the first industry association dedicated to advancing the emerging business
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of nanotechnology and microsystems. The NanoBusiness Alliance is creating a collective voice for the emerging small tech industry and developing a range of initiatives to support and strengthen the nanotechnology business community. The Alliance focuses on research and education, public policy and awareness, public relations and promotion, providing forums, panels and industry support. Information on the Alliance can be found at www.nanobusiness.org.
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TechXtra®
Published by the National Science & Technology Education Partnership (NSTEP)
formerly Electronics Industries Foundation
2500 Wilson Blvd.
Suite 210
Arlington, VA
22201-3834
(703) 907-7400
www.nationalstep.org
President
Kathy L. Warye
Executive Editor TechXtra
Debra D. Bass
Writer
Eileen Putman
Graphic Designer
Philip Toups
Web Design
Chris Korin
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NSTEP is grateful for the support provided for this issue by:
Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company
Philips Electronics
Consumer Electronics Association
Active International
Cornell Dubilier Electronics
Editorial Advisory Committee
Jennifer Martino, PhD, science teacher, Governor Livingston High School
John E. Riley, Radiation Safety Officer, Agere Systems
Douglas A. Tyson, chemistry teacher, Benjamin Banneker Academic High School
Gary Ybarra, PhD, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Duke University
Guest Technical Advisor
for this issue:
Stephen J. Fonash, PhD, Director
Penn State Nanofabrication Facility
The Pennsylvania State University
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TechXtra, a free e-newsletter published periodically from September through May by the National Science & Technology Education Partnership (NSTEP), brings new technology to life for students and their science, technology and math teachers. And, it brings life to technology with a close-up look at the jobs, career paths and education of the people who make it all happen.
National Science & Technology Education Partnership (NSTEP) is a nonprofit 501(c )3 organization that is dedicated to developing tomorrow's technology leaders.
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