Nanoclast

I was reading over at Nanotech-Now an article that provides a synopsis of some presentations given at the annual Nano-Enhanced Materials (HiPerNano) Conference put on by Cranfield University and the Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network (NanoKTN) in the UK.

It appears as though the presentations were selected based on the criteria of the nanotechnologies being in the real world. So we get presentations from companies like Rolls Royce and Aston Martin. For Rolls Royce they are using nanoparticles as coatings on the turbines of their jet engines to prevent ice from forming on them, and Aston Martin is using nanocoatings as protection for the car's luxurious surfaces among a number of other applications.

As laudable as this work is it does strike one as a bit short of the mark when seen in the context of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. Our dependence on oil to power the internal combustion engines that propel automobiles can be seen, at least tangentially, as a reason we are facing this catastrophe in the Gulf.

But it seems that alternatives to this technology, which was first described in the 13^th Century and was adopted for widespread use in the 19^th Century, are far from being viable replacements and at this point may be even more harmful to the environment than the status quo.

As a recent white paper “Sustainable Technologies for the Next Decade” over at Cientifica points out we are reaching critical supply levels of the rare earth resources that current battery technology requires, like lanthanum.

As the Cientifica paper comments: “Each electric Prius motor requires 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of neodymium, and each battery uses 10 to 15 kg (22-33 lb) of lanthanum. That number is expected to nearly double under plans to boost the fuel economy.” And, of course, we have all but abandoned fuel cells in cars primarily because of infrastructure issues.

So here we are a decade into the 21^st Century, seemingly forever chained to a 19^th Century technology, which in more ways than just CO2 emissions is not doing us any favors and we get nanotechnology applied as a protective coating to luxury surfaces of automobiles.

If one is an optimist, you will conclude that sooner or later we will develop some alternative technology to the internal combustion engine that will not do us more harm than good. But even an optimist has to be asking where is the apparatus that will lead us in that direction?

Surely the restraints of short-term profits that often drive the research directions of corporate research nearly precludes these kinds of developments, and the government-backed research found at university or national labs can seem so far detached at times from any useful application  that it is unclear how they will ever get us to where we want to be.

The stakes are too high to continue with this catch-as-catch-can approach to developing technologies, perhaps it’s time we take seriously how we can streamline our development of emerging technologies. 

After recovering from a bit of wince from the idea of connecting the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s recent urgings in the area of nanomanufacturing  to desktop nanofabs, this article presented some interesting information on the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program developed by NanoInk.

According to Tom Levesque, General Manager of NanoInk in the Americas, he visited a school  in Bogota, Colombia where about 350 teenagers in conjunction with the NanoProfessor curriculum work with atomic force microscopes and end up with better training than many receive at private universities in the country.

“The setting is that these children come down from these virtual slums behind the school, they go through these programs, and emerge out of the front of the building into society with an education that is not even available at some of the best private schools in Bogota,” Levesque is quoted in the article as saying.

While making available an AFM for 350 kids seems almost as incredible as the idea that these kids have a better education than those at the best private schools, one has to wonder why this program has taken off in foreign countries and has not fared as well in the United States.

Professor Deb Newberry, who sits on the Advisory Board of the NanoProfessor, has been using the training program as part of her curriculum with students at Dakota County Technical College in Minneapolis says that her students do enjoy it. 

Not sure if this means that the program is more effective than other curriculums, but you can listen to the the entire interviews with Levesque and Newberry on the ScienceNews Radio Network talk program, the Promise of Tomorrow with Colonel Mason to find out.

The quantum computer is one of those technologies that gets held out as some sort of Holy Grail and remains just as elusive with those who have claimed to have achieved it being regarded with a high degree of skepticism.

One avenue that has been pursued in realizing a solid-state quantum computer has been the use of quantum dots as the building block.

Quantum dots are a strange phenomenon. Spectrum Editor, Eric Guizzo, described them nicely in the quantum computer application as:

“They are nanoscale structures built within semiconducting materials that hold tiny puddles of electrons, which give each dot a collective quantum mechanical property called spin. The dots' spins, which can be either up or down, represent bits of quantum information, or qubits. Because quantum properties such as spin can exist in two states at once--being both up and down in the case of spin--computers using qubits can make many calculations simultaneously.”

This ability could lead to much faster calculation abilities in which it would take a traditional computer decades to factor a 300 digit number a quantum computer could conceivably do it in hours or days.

Now researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia, led by Professor Michelle Simmons, have created a transistor using quantum dots that is 10 times smaller than those commonly in use today as they work towards their ultimate goal of building a quantum computer.

The researchers were able to create the transistor by replacing seven atoms in a silicon crystal with phosphorus atoms. To give you a sense of the scale, the extreme of current CMOS process, the 22nm node, has transistor gates of 42 atoms across.

The research, which was initially published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology,  marks the first time that it has been possible to dictate the placement and behavior of single atoms within a transistor, according to Simmons.

"We're basically controlling nature at the atomic scale," Simmons is quoted as saying. "This is one of the key milestones in building a quantum computer."

Well, there are issues such as entanglement, the coupling between quibits, to be addressed, but it is a step towards quantum computers.

Thanks to Twitter, I was lucky enough to stumble upon coverage provided at Ira Feldman’s Blog of the IEEE San Francisco Bay Area Nanotechnology Council Sixth Annual Symposium “Nanotechnology: State of the Art & Applications”.

Mr. Feldman is providing what seems to be a unique service of letting those of us who are unable to attend the meeting know what’s going on. As typical of conferences in general, you get some press releases prior to the event to boost attendance but nobody really covers what goes on. And that’s a pity because this one looks to be pretty good at least based on Mr. Feldman’s coverage of it.

There are some interesting gems, such as a report on Dr. Hans Stork’s, VP and CTO Applied Materials, presentation “Nanotechnology in Semiconductor Industry” in which we learn that Dr. Stork not only doesn’t expect a slow down of Moore’s law in a post-CMOS world but he doesn’t expect that there will be a post-CMOS world with CMOS remaining the backbone of the electronics industry.

I mean that is great stuff. If I had attended the conference, it is possible that I would have heard that, but I do have to hand it to Mr. Feldman for providing a pretty thorough reporting of it.

One thing that this coverage brings to light is how important process refinement is to the development of nanotechnology. So many of the presentations from university and corporate researchers alike are focusing on the obstacles of repeatability and quality assurance. 

This is nanotechnology beyond the hype. This shows us where the state of the art and applications in nanotech really exist. Basically what you have here is a great program, big-name speakers and finally someone taking the trouble to take it all down for us. Thanks IEEE and Mr. Feldman.

I first heard of the patent-pending project calling itself the Integrated Nano-Science Commodity Exchange (INSCX^TM) earlier this year. It appears that INSCX intends to develop a global commodity exchange for nanomaterials.

In February of this year the project announced its formal agreement with AssuredNano^TM to “coordinate the global accreditation of supply onto the market platform which is scheduled to launch in the UK early 2011.”

My reaction to the prospect of a nanomaterials commodity exchange was mixed. My initial thoughts were what nanomaterials can we really place in the category of a commodity? How will this be different than the various stock indexes that were established around so-called nanotech companies, like Toyota?

The blog Frogheart has posted the first of a three-part interview with Charles McGovern, the Chief Executive Officer of INSCX, that aims at answering some of these and many more informed questions.

While it becomes clear through the interview that establishing a commodity exchange could help both buyers and sellers in maintaining both pricing structures and conformity in product quality, it shouldn’t be forgotten that commodity exchanges are also built around speculation and whether the future prices of a commodity come in above or below a spot price. 

Ultimately the success or failure of the commodity exchange will depend largely on whether the buyers and sellers of these nanomaterials really find it beneficial to their business to support it.

While the prospect of having animated cartoons on a child’s cereal box may be appealing in science fiction movies, such as in the video below from the 2002 film “Minority Report”, it may not make quite as much sense in the bean counting world of business.

“Smart packaging” as it has come to be known would interact with the user, perhaps providing nutritional information or some cartoon like in the film clip above. But when one considers you might be using it on a box of cereal that you would sell for a few dollars and then would get thrown out with the trash it hardly seems worth the expense.

I suggested almost six years ago in a report I authored for Pira Intl. "The Future of Nanotechnology in Printing and Packaging"  that you might see this kind of packaging made available for high-ticket items like luxury goods, but it would be hard to see the economics of using this technology on disposal products.

But this kind of technology so excites our imagination that companies continue to pursue its realization. One of these companies is Dublin-based Ntera who is making the news again, such as here and here with their Nanochromics technology.

Ntera was launched back in 1997 as a spin-out from the University College of Dublin. Typical of most technology-driven start-ups they pursued a number of possible application areas before settling down on electronic displays.

Once they did they pursued "nanochromics". The term nanochromics is one of those nano-centric turns of phrase that plays off the term electrochromics technology that we are all familiar with on the rear view mirrors of our automobiles. The nanochromics technology uses nanostructured films to comprise the electrochemical cell and limitations in switching speed have been overcome by molecular design.

Dr. David Corr, President and CEO of Ntera, is correct in his assessment; we are seeing a new era in the technology of printed electronics with the ability to now print “multi-layered components such as batteries, diodes, transistors, memory, solar cells and displays.” 

But one can’t help but wonder whether we are seeing an example of a technology in search of an application. Where is the market pull for these types of printed electronics for packaging? I am not suggesting they don’t exist, but sorting out where that market pull is coming from seems at least as important as refining the technology.  

I was recently encouraged by a project that calls itself The Long News, which uses the criteria of only covering stories that will seem important in 10, 20, 100 or even a 1,000 years. My sense of encouragement came from the fact that a number of their recent headlines were stories that I had covered here on this blog. It would seem science news is probably one of the most important to us in the long run.

However, in this video below I was somewhat disappointed in how Kirk Citron, a Curator of The Long News, presented the idea that robots are circulating through the bloodstream of mice and fixing things…today. The three stories he cites as evidence of this development (Discovery News , Technology Review or the Inquirer) hardly add any credence to his assertion.

But am I missing the forest through the trees here? Could it be that it is more compelling to talk about robots traveling through our bloodstream and fixing things than it is to talk about gene therapy?

I was hauled on the mat just the other day for a schematic I used to accompany a blog post. Since the scientist behind the research was the one credited for the illustration, it seemed to me a legitimate way to…well illustrate the technology.

Whatever you may think about that example, I think more of us could agree that the latest artist rendering of DNA molecular robots may have stepped over some line.

The blog 10minu9 has a real interesting take on this. He provides the following two images:

Both are representations of the same technology, but with clearly different results when it comes to the mind of the reader. And he laments: “…although it’s great that work like this is publicised, the linguistic and visual imagery vastly overpowers the actual science in the article.”

I tend to agree with this assessment. However, there is a rub here and that is the first schematic may be more accurate to the science, but it will all but ensure that no one reads the article outside of small niche of scientists. So while I would be really troubled if I saw the latter image in the Nature article in which this research was originally published I am less so when I see it on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. 

But the potential for getting the wrong end of the stick so to speak on what nanotechnology means, or what it can do, or what its risks might be is very real and is nicely exemplified in a piece over at TNTLog in which what appear to be fairly shaky scientific claims are made that equate carbon nanotubes to asbestos. The confusion on that one is already rampant and appears likely to continue and magnify.

There is no doubt that in the world of advanced materials research, graphene is now enjoying favored status, even over its carbon cousin, carbon nanotubes.

Just this year, graphene has overcome its lack of a bandgap, has once again broken its own record for high-speed transistors and has even ventured outside of electronics into the realm of optoelectronics.

Now researchers at the University of California, Riverside, led by Alexander Balandin have revisited their 2008 research with the thermal conductivity of graphene and demonstrated “how the thermal conductivity of multi-layer graphene changes as it goes from being 2D to 3D as more layers are added.”

The results were originally published in Nature’s Materials and demonstrated that as the number of layers increased, the material’s thermal conductivity decreased. According to the Institute of Physics article cited above, “the thermal conductivity decreases with thickness because phonons – quantized vibrations of the crystal lattice that transport heat – couple across the different atomic layers in the material. The more layers there are, the greater the coupling and more phonon scattering occurs, disrupting the conduction of heat.”

But even at this decreased level the graphene containing four atomic levels far exceeded the capabilities of copper films.

This effectively adds managing heat for electronics to the applications for graphene. The introduction of graphene for these heat management purposes would likely start in the area of thermal interface materials for chip packaging.

But Balandin has been attributed as saying in a number of the articles out there covering this development that graphene could in five years be used with silicon in computer chips, such as interconnect wiring or heat spreaders.

In any case, as electronics shrink heat issues are becoming more intense and they are likely to grow even more acute when proposed three-dimensional electronics are introduced, which use a vertical integration of computer chips.

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) have been providing a more attractive alternative to Light Emitting Diodes (LED) and Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) for some time now. OLED's ability to function without the need for a backlight makes them far more efficient than their LCD cousins and they are brighter than LEDs and don't need glass as a substrate like both LEDs and LCDs do.

However, OLEDs are not without their drawbacks; the two most notable problems involve exciton quenching and photon loss processes.

In an article over at Nanowerk recently reported work by researchers at the Institute of Nanostructured Materials (ISMN) in Bologna, Italy is described in which alternative planar light sources that combine the switching mechanism of a thin-film transistor and an electroluminescent device in the same architecture .

The research was initially reported in the May 2, 2010 online edition of Nature Materials. It is believed that the “Organic light-emitting transistors” (OLETs) could usher in a new era in organic optoelectronics.

As quoted in Nanowerk’s exclusive interview with one of the researchers, "OLET is a new light-emission concept, providing planar light sources that can be easily integrated in substrates of different nature – silicon, glass, plastic, paper, etc. – using standard microelectronic techniques," says Michele Muccini "The focus of OLET development is the possibility to enable new display/light source technologies, and exploit a transport geometry to suppress the deleterious photon losses and exciton quenching mechanisms inherent in the OLED architecture."

The nanotechnology bit of the device comes in its scale. The three organic layers of the device are 62nm thick and the gold contacts that serve as the source and drain are 50nm in size. 

While the researchers concede that some technical improvements need to be made, such as reliability and lifetime-related issues, they believe the device provides a viable way of manufacturing organic light emitting devices with much improved performance over what is currently available.

After my examination at the beginning of this week  on how nanotechnology might help address the cleanup of the oil spill in the Gulf, I did a short interview for Spectrum’s Podcast series on the same subject.

I was posed a question in the interview that I had not really considered when composing my blog post: What if governments required by a certain date in the future that oil companies would need to have developed materials and/or technologies that would significantly improve our ability to clean up the mess caused by oil spills?

The example given for this kind of government mandated innovation was regulations imposed on car manufacturers for improved emissions or efficiency.

It was an interesting question to me because I am continually confronted with the prospect that nanotechnology itself must be regulated not that governments might require its use.

On the contrary, it has seemed recently that the predominant attitude towards emerging technologies is that they cause more problems than they solve. We may even be seeing examples of this in the Gulf oil spill where it appears that the chemical dispersants being used by BP may be causing more damage to the wildlife than the oil.

I was further spurred to reexamine the seeming failure of technology to come to the rescue by Tim Harper, who I interviewed for my original piece, and who added some thoughts of his own over at his TNTLog to the subject. The question seemed to be: If we have the technologies, why don’t we use them?

To get an answer to this question, I thought I would ask Harper’s colleague in a recent proposal to the World Economic Forum on how to address the problems of innovation, Professor Andrew Maynard. 

Professor Maynard is a noted thought leader on the the roles risk, regulation and innovation play in nanotechnology through his popular blog 2020 Science and has recently moved on from his position as Chief Scientist at the Project on Emerging Technologies to take on the role of Director for Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. And I put to him, what is the relationship between risk, regulation and innovation when we look at the example of how nanotechnology can be applied to the oil spill crisis in the Gulf?

“There's a myth that technology innovation can solve all our problems,” argues Maynard  “And to back it up, there's a long string of examples of where technological breakthroughs have made life better - treating disease, providing energy, improving access to clean water and nutritious food, and so on.  Yet the real benchmark for whether we are getting technology innovation right is not the success stories, but the failures.”

According to Maynard, an example of one of these failures is the oil spill in the Gulf.

“Despite all of our investment in technologies like nanotechnology and others, why are there no clear solutions to fixing the leak?” asks Maynard. “It's not that the science isn't there - there are many potential routes to addressing such spills embedded in areas such as nanotechnology, biotech and synthetic biology, but the drivers, the incentives and the pathways to transform scientific advances into beneficial technologies are lacking.”

Maynard points out that what is currently missing at a national and global level is incentives, frameworks and pathways to translate new science into effective solutions; enabling technology innovation to address the problems that matter, rather than those that are merely convenient or profitable.

And along the lines of the proposal that both he and Harper presented to the World Economic Forum, Maynard has a framework by which this can be achieved, which has at least three guiding principles:

• Strategic foresight
• Developing effective Incentives and mechanisms
• Rethinking the relationship between risk, uncertainty and sustainable innovation

According to Maynard, you need strategic foresight to provide a clear and unbiased assessment on challenges where technology innovation is needed.

“This should draw on the perspective of all stakeholders - including members of the public,” says Maynard.  “It should be grounded in social and economic need - including preparations for dealing with abrupt and catastrophic events.   And it should be realistic - considering areas where there is a reasonable chance of science translating into innovative solutions, given appropriate support.”

But Maynard recognizes that once we have developed a strong strategy, we will need to develop new types of incentives that can lead to solutions that are in fact needed by society. He even acknowledges that to date that the innovation landscape does not favor strategic, responsible and sustainable innovation. “But there is no reason why it shouldn't - if the appropriate policies were developed, barriers adjusted and incentives created,” he adds.

“Developing a new innovation landscape for the 21st century will not be easy,” according to Maynard. “But it is essential if new science is to be translated into new solutions to the many challenges facing global society.”

It seems that if we do not reevaluate our system of innovation we are likely to be facing another man-made tragedy that we could have ameliorated or even avoided with technologies that we developed under such a framework.