Is Small the next Big Thing

• Powerful computers the size of a grain of sand, able to operate for decades on the power of a single wristwatch battery
• Robots smaller than a cell could roam our bodies eliminating bacteria, clearing out clogged arteries, and reversing the ravages of old age. Potential benefits that immediately come to mind are the elimination of the common cold, AIDS and even cancer.

Welcome to the brave new world of nano that promises a gigantic revolution which would make the Internet appear ho-hum in comparison. In 1959, physicist Richard Feynman advised his colleagues: "There's plenty of room at the bottom." He envisioned a discipline devoted to manipulating smaller and smaller units of matter. "I am not afraid," he wrote, "to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately -in the great future - we can arrange atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down!" This visionary salvo, the first-ever scientific discussion of nanotechnology was based on a well-known scientific premise - properties of materials are dependent on the way their atoms are arranged. Rearrange the atoms in coal and one gets diamonds. Rearrange the atoms in soil, water, and air, and you have grass. Scientists believe if they are able to rearrange atoms and molecules one by one - with every atom in just the right place - much as the way children arrange building blocks to create different objects - it will allow them to make products lighter, stronger, smarter, cheaper, cleaner, and infinitesimally smaller. Welcome to the world of nanoscience where the width of the average human hair (about 80,000 nanometers) is huge. Nanotechnology uses individual atoms or molecules as components of tiny machines, measured by the nanometer, or one-millionth of a millimeter. (A millimeter is equivalent to 0.039 of an inch.).

The value proposition of nanotechnology is inversely proportionate to its size. That the technology is gradually progressing beyond the fringes of futurologists is evident from US President George W Bush' Fiscal 2003 Science Budget where nanotechnology research received 17 per cent increase to $679 million. In his budget speech, President Bush argued, "The convergence of nanotechnology with information technology, biology and social sciences will reinvigorate discoveries and innovation in many areas of the economy." Nanotech has also attracted investment from a large number of investors and entrepreneurs. Recent statistics published by NanoBusiness Alliance, an association for the nanotechnology industry, assert that the field is already a $45.5 billion industry that could grow to $700 billion by 2008. Leaders such as IBM, Intel and Hewlett-Packard are investing big bucks to make the science commercially viable - they envision the technology will be used for memory chips, mini-computers, biomedical treatment such as cancer treatments and even military applications.

Researchers at IBM have discovered a way of storing a terabit of data on a chip no bigger than a postage stamp. In July 2002, IBM scientists made use of innovative nanotechnology to demonstrate data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch - enough to store 25 million printed textbook pages on a surface the size of a postage stamp -- in a research project code-named "Millipede". "The Millipede project has the potential to bring tremendous data capacity to mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular phones, and multifunctional watches. In addition, the company is exploring the use of this concept in a variety of other applications, such as large-area microscopic imaging, nanoscale lithography or atomic and molecular manipulation.

Both IBM and HP are competing to extend the boundaries of conventional semiconductors resulting in higher performance processors or memory chips with more capacity. Using an innovative new approach in which individual molecules move across an atomic surface like toppling dominoes, IBM researchers built and operated the world's smallest working computer circuit. The new "molecule cascade" technique enabled the IBM scientists to make working digital-logic elements some 260,000 times smaller than those used in today's most advanced semiconductor chips. The most complex circuit they built -- a 12 x 17-nanometer three-input sorter -- is so small that 190 billion could fit atop a standard pencil-top eraser 7mm (about 1/4-inch) in diameter. HP also built a new kind of extremely minute circuit for computer chips using nanotechnology. These new circuits measure less than one square micron and can be used to create memory chips or to augment processors. HP asserts that more than 1,000 of these circuits can fit on the tip of a human hair.

In the second-half of 2003, Intel, is getting ready to mass roll-out the 90-nanometre chip-making process, code-named Prescott. The 90 metre nano-width is a breakthrough. The chip's intelligence is directly proportionate to the intelligence. Making them smaller allows more of them to be laid down in the same space and enables the chip to operate faster because electrical signals have a shorter distance to travel. In the world of intelligent microprocessors, Intel envisages smarter devices that can, for example, translate English into a foreign language in real-time or mobile phones that let you watch a movie with a quality picture and sound. The competition is hotting up with IBM, Advanced Micro Devices and Texas Instruments snapping at its heels.

Nanotechnology's applications extend beyond the realm of semiconductors and computers. Research groups, for instance, are exploring the interface between nanotechnology and medicine, the ability to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease and traumatic injury, and preserve and improve human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowledge of the human body. Among nano-boosters' most expansive visions are armies of tiny robots released in a person's bloodstream to patrol the body, seeking out and repairing damaged cells before illness can take hold. The nano-level bar code kit developed by Nanoscale Technologies, a Mountain View (Calif.) startup for instance allows tiny tags that function like reflective bar codes to be attached to dozens of molecules in a small sample of cells. Researchers will, thus, accurately track and measure complex biological interactions -- so-called multiplexing.

Probably the biggest nanotech payoff would be in the area of materials. In their search for new disruptive technologies, a team of 25 nanotech scientists at GE are researching on how does a ceramic coffee cup break much more easily than a seashell? That might seem like a question to ponder during a long, lazy afternoon at the beach. The research is grounded in nanoscience at specific business issues, is looking for the answer and using a rather unusual strategy: it is reverse-engineering seashells. Seashells, it turns out, have some surprising qualities. Researchers attributes their crack- and shatter-resistant properties to "an exquisite micro architecture." Understanding the details of this nanostructure could lead to insights into how to make ceramics that are similarly tough and shatter resistant. The research could take another decade to produce results but other such as NanoSource companies have already announced products based on nanoparticles. NanoSource, founded in 1999, announced a prototype process for manufacturing titanium dioxide nanopowders, which are less than 100 nanometers in diameter. Because of their optic qualities, titanium dioxide nanopowders are a hot commodity in the sunscreen and cosmetics industry. The breakthrough may appear trite but was big enough to convince Du Pont Technologies to buy a stake in the company.

While nanoenthusiasts are excited by the immense payoffs from the technology, nanoskeptics argue that social, moral, and ethical implications of the technology are ill-understood. Environmentalists fear that nanotechnology may create contaminants whose tiny size makes them ultrahazardous. If they get in the bloodstream or into ground water, even if the nanoparticles themselves aren't dangerous, they could react with other things that are harmful. The proposed ability of some molecular machine systems to self-replicate - who can invade and take control of human bodies and threaten human existence. Science fiction writers such as Michael Crichton wose latest science fiction fantasy "Prey", revolves around swarms of minute mutant and indestructible "nanobots" smaller than 100 nanometre who invade the human body are adding to public awareness and apprehensions of the new technology. Constructing an artificial self-replicating system at the molecular level would be difficult although not impossible. At the moment the fear is exaggerated although the Foresight Institute has begun to work on it.

Large-scale commercial applications are at least a decade away but the technology will continue to take small but significant steps . Look out for more on this space!

Read Feynman's Lecture: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom

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