Nanoclast

I was really struck by a headline that has been circulating around nanotech websites since yesterday: “Nanotechnology Needs Big Facilities".

I was taken aback by the notion that what nanotechnology’s development has lacked over the last 10 years of large government investment is the building of large new facilities. From my perspective, it has been almost exclusively the construction industries around the world that have gained the most from all this government largesse.

A nice twist of irony to go along with my incredulity is that these sentiments were delivered in Barcelona, Spain at the first International Congress on Nanotechnology and Research Infrastructures.

Spain as the setting for this proclamation strikes me as ironic since Spain is in the midst of a economic crisis that has been in part created by construction companies building housing that no one could buy or occupy: speculative construction without an underlying economy to support the result. This strikes me as not being too different than International Iberian Nanotech Laboratory located in Braga, Portugal that is a joint facility shared by Spain and Portugal.

In that case, you have two countries that a year before the construction of this 30-million-Euros facility ranked at the absolute bottom of per capita spending on nanotech, according to a report from the European Commission entitled “Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology”. With its 4 cents per person spent on Nanotech, Spain invested 1.6 million Euros in nanotech in 2004. The following year they announced that they were going to be investing 15 million Euros in a facility.

After nearly starving research and researchers of basic funding that would pay salaries or get needed lab equipment, the government decides to increase funding by nearly 10 times the level of the year before. But for what? A new building? I supposed it’s easier for all parties involved to turn to their shiny new building as a product of tax dollars rather than inconclusive work in advanced materials to create better batteries, for instance.

But in fairness, the headlines in their efforts to play on the words “nanotechnology” and “big” (I want to add this phenomenon to Bill Maher’s list of “New Rules”: No more puns on nanotechnology and size) managed to miss the message which is not “bigger” facilities but “sharing” the facilities that already exist more efficiently.

According to Carlo Rizzuto, head of Italy’s Elettra synchrotron and chair of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the aim should be integrating all the existing facilities in a network, allowing scientists from different fields of biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and others to work together. 

But this idea of sharing, which is so critical to the advancement of science, is almost anathema to nationalistic aims that fuels so much government nanotech funding. So all of these huge government investments that are supposed to put one country or region ahead of all the others is almost diametrically opposed to the sharing of these facilities. The rub will be that the nanotechnology advancements that these various governments are seeking will not come about through this race to put your region ahead of all the others but sharing your facilities with all the others.

When graphene was first reported just six years ago one of the knocks against it was that it was difficult to produce in sufficient quantities to have a significant impact on commercial applications.

But now researchers from Rice University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new method for producing bulk quantities of graphene.

The researchers work has been published in the Journal Nature Nanotechnology and has demonstrated how the common industrial solvent chlorosulphonic acid can be used on graphite so that individual layers in the graphite peeled away spontaneously.

According to the lead co-author of the Nature article, Matteo Pasquali, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry at Rice University, this method produces a very pure material while employing the bulk fluid-processing techniques commonly used by the chemical industry.

The process produced two grams of graphene per liter of acid, which is a result that is about 10 times more concentrated than existing methods. With these concentrated solutions, the researchers were able to make transparent films that were electrically conductive.

By improving the production yield for graphene and being able to make transparent films from the results, the researchers see applications brightening for graphene in areas ranging from less expensive touch screens on smart phones to creating fibers that could strengthen composite materials.

My open question last month on whether nanotechnology could offer some solutions to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has received a few suggestions on how it could be used and some named products.

However, it seems that one nanoparticle-based solution developed by Stamford, Conn-based Green Earth Technologies has run afoul of a group of scientists  who have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency through a letter not to allow the use of the product as a dispersant in the Gulf.

I suppose it’s not a coincidence that I came to know of the story from a piece written by the investigative journalist, Andrew Schneider. You may recall my review of Mr. Schneider’s work in which I discuss his amplification (shall we call it) of some research that has indicated how some carbon nanotubes mimic the pathogenic effects of asbestos in causing lung damage.

Now please note the research is far from conclusive, is not about all nanoparticles only carbon nanotubes because of their length and at that only involves some carbon nanotubes.

With this in mind, Schneider manages to get a frustrated quote from Dr. Michael Harbut, an occupational medicine specialist who is concerned about the health of clean up workers, who says: “As does asbestos, nanoparticles have been shown to cause an aggressive cancer called mesothelioma,"

No, it hasn’t been shown that it causes mesothelioma. First, the research is only about carbon nanotubes, not nanoparticles. And the research has only shown that some carbon nanotubes can cause the same pathological effects as asbestos, namely because the CNTs are so long the phacocytes are not able to engulf them entirely so in response they release a toxin that doesn’t effect the fiber but harms the surrounding tissue. It ‘s called frustrated phacocytosis.

I really can’t find fault with Dr. Harbut here. Instead Mr. Schneider from his previous work seems to be building a case that nanoaparticles cause cancer so he found someone with a title in front of their name that could provide a quote with the words “cancer” and “nanoparticles” in the same sentence. Again, playing a bit fast and loose with terminology manages to make the story more sensational, but cheats us of getting a better idea of what the real risks are.

Now as to the efficacy or dangers of the dispersant, I have to concur that it has not been tested. But it seems that the studies on the 118 oil-controlling products that have been approved for use by the EPA are lacking in some details as well. These chemicals were approved so long ago in some cases that the EPA has not been able to verify the accuracy of their toxicity data, and so far BP has dropped over a million gallons of this stuff into the Gulf.

I get it, I really do. Let’s determine the toxicity of a product, I’m all for that. But to continue to make all nanoparticles some kind of toxic monolith foisted upon the unsuspecting public by greedy capitalists might build the reputations of investigative journalists but leaves the rest of us out in the cold.

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.