First published in Techlink, The Daily Record, Baltimore, December 2002
Assembly required
Promise of nanotechnology could change the world from the bottom up
RUSS BARNES
Special to The Daily Record
Don't like the shape of your nose, the color of your eyes, the paunch that just won't go away? Change it; no plastic surgery required. Spend nights awake worrying about the depletion of the ozone layer? No sweat; it can be rebuilt. Disease, world hunger, pollution, maybe even human mortality: Gone.
NIST Post Doctoral Research Associate William Huber transfers helium into a dilution refrigerator as part of a study of noise in nanoscale electronic devices. A special transistor within the refrigerator is able to measure single electron charges with the world's highest sensitivity. A better understanding of extraneous electronic signals or noise within these tiny devices should ultimately help improve calibration of sophisticated instruments requiring exacting measurements of electrical capacitance and current.
Sound improbable, perhaps impossible? Maybe not. Researchers now are working on the technology to make this science-fiction dream a reality that will change the world in ways that can barely be imagined today.
With computers, data is broken down and organized into combinations of ones and zeros, which allows that data to be reproduced and distributed easily. Similarly, nanotechnology will allow the basic building blocks of all matter, atoms and molecules, to be manipulated, making it possible to manufacture, replicate and distribute any known substance - including foods, fuel and even DNA - easily and cheaply.
Nanotechnology, a hybrid of chemistry and engineering, begins with the examination of matter at a millionth of a meter and enables the manipulation of each individual atom and molecule by using both chemical and mechanical tools. Scientists already have proved this is possible.
"Our capacity to communicate with atoms and molecules through computer technology in ranges of 30 nanometers wide allows us new manufacturing and etching techniques," says Bob White, director of the Data Storage Systems Center at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The next step in the fruition of nanotechnology - still about 15 years out, according to scientists' estimates - will be to program nanoscopic machines called assemblers to rearrange atoms and molecules into a desired structure. Because it would take thousands of years for a single assembler to produce any product atom-by-atom, nanomachines called replicators will be produced and programmed to build more assemblers.
The ultimate goal of nanotechnology is to produce a new way of manufacturing. Trillions of assemblers and replicators will work in tandem to make products automatically. This eventually will replace all traditional labor methods and will greatly decrease manufacturing costs, thereby making all consumer products cheaper, stronger and more plentiful.
Bottom-up technology
If all this seems confusing, think of it as building from the bottom up.
Nanotechnology was introduced in a 1959 lecture given at CalTech by Dr. Richard Feynman. In his talk, "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom," he described how the laws of physics do not limit human ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules.
Feynman described "a vision for a world where materials were constructed using a bottom-up, rather than a top-down, approach," according to Jack Eldrich, deputy director of the Office of Strategic and Long-Range Planning in Minnesota, in his article "Eleven Reasons Why Nanotechnology Will Arrive Sooner than Expected" in Futures Research Quarterly, Spring 2002.
Eldrich wrote: "Instead of whittling down wood, fusing metal, molding plastic or making the latest computer chip by etching an ever-finer circuit out of silicon, man would be able to put atoms precisely where he wanted - just as a potato somehow knows how to arrange atoms from the surrounding dirt, water and air to create itself."
This could play out in some remarkable, world-changing ways, sparking a whole new industrial revolution.
Potentially, world famine could be wiped out by machines putting atoms together to construct food. In the world of computers, nanotechnology will be needed to create a new generation of components capable of storing trillions of bytes of information in a computer hundreds of times smaller than the ones used today.
"Man would be able to put atoms precisely where he wanted." - Jack Eldrich, Office of Strategic and Long-Range Planning
White at Carnegie-Mellon explains an effort that focuses mainly on better hard disk storage devices: "We can scale things down 10 million times with nanotechnology. That gives you great power. If you can etch a computer circuit using an ion beam as a lithography stylus, or if you can fashion a recording head out of little islands of magnetic material that writes on smaller areas of a hard disk for storage, you can do more for less." And, White says, the technology is here today. Carnegie-Mellon is licensing its technology to many private companies and providing it to their corporate investors.
In other future applications of nanotechnology, nanorobots could be used in performing delicate surgeries, working a thousand times more precisely than today's scalpels, and with no scarring. These nanorobots could be ingested to attack and reconstruct the cells and viruses that cause diseases. And, on a more superficial level, they could be used to alter a person's physical appearance and perhaps slow or reverse the aging process.
Airborne nanorobots could be programmed to rebuild the ozone layer, and others could be used to remove contaminants from the water. It also is believed that materials manufactured using the bottom-up method of nanotechnology could produce less pollution and decrease the dependence on nonrenewable resources.
There is much hyperbolic speculation surrounding nanotechnology today - even among ordinarily reticent scientists. And while it is acknowledged that much of the technology may take years to develop and that the effort and investment to make it materialize may be daunting, the technology is so strategic and so promising it cannot be neglected.
Government backing
To that end, in January 2000, then-President Bill Clinton asked for a $227 million increase in governmental investment in nanotechnology R&D, which was used in a major initiative called the National Nanotechnology Initiative. This nearly doubled the government's investment in the technology, bringing the amount of funds up to $497 million in last year's national budget.
NIST physicist Joseph Stroscio adjusts a sample in a molecular beam epitaxy chamber, part of the Nanoscale Physics Laboratory. A key component of the laboratory is a scanning tunneling microscope, designed and constructed at NIST. Operating in an ultra-cold, ultra-high-vacuum environment with a high magnetic field, the microscope measures electronic and magnetic properties of nanostructures on an atom-by-atom basis.
"Congress is enthusiastic about supporting nanotechnology for defense and economic development reasons," says Dr. Michael C. Roco, leader of the initiative's 16-member committee.
The majority of the government's funds for nanotechnology R&D goes to universities, which also will help train a work force to carry out the needs created by the technology. Additionally, many federal agencies are involved in nanotechnology research and receive government funding: the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, State, Transportation, Justice and Energy; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Food and Drug Administration; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va., the initiative's largest beneficiary, receives $604 million each year in governmental funds. The National Institute for Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg is using NIST grants worth $2 million apiece to fund efforts to develop nanotechnology's practical applications, according to Dr. Richard Cavanagh, director of the Advanced Technology Program. The National Institutes for Health in Bethesda also is providing in-kind services and grants to promote the technology in medicine.
"The technology, while specific, is very broad in its implications and will have an impact on many industrial disciplines," explains Roco.
And nanotechnology is becoming a competitive activity in the world today, he says. "Many countries, especially the Western Europeans, are competing with the U.S. in nanotechnology. We publish papers, and the Europeans are very flexible in using our information for their own advancement."
It is apparent that the development of nanotechnology has a strategic scale proportionate to the development of atomic energy in the 1940s.
Local application
Locally, College Park-based CytImmune Sciences Inc., is an example of an entrepreneurial, private company that is working to demonstrate how nanotechnology transfer can benefit the health care sector.
This surreal landscape is actually an atomic-level view of chromium deposited on iron. The image was made by NIST researchers to better understand new magnetic recording and storage materials.
Funded by NIST at $2 million, with agreements with the University of Maryland to share laboratory facilities and the NIH to research and verify results, CytImmune is using nanotechnology to develop a cure for cancer.
The nanoparticle Cytlmmune uses is colloidal gold, according to Dr. Larry Tamarkin, president and CEO of CytImmune. "We inject those gold atoms intravenously into the body. Blood vessels and organs are inherently 'leaky.' The size of the gap in blood vessels is about 100 nanometers. Our gold particles are about 35 nanometers wide, and so they can flow, unobstructed through blood vessels and body organs," he said.
Tamarkin explains that other therapies can't move in such an unimpeded way through the body. Computer technology is used to guide the traffic of gold particles, which have therapeutic drugs bonded to them, toward their goal of targeting the tumors. The gold nanoparticles, unlike the introduction of ordinary drugs, have free range to reach their destination and knock out toxic poisons.
Because of the developments promoted by CytImmune with the help of public-sector institutions such as NIST, the ability to address matter on the nanodimension level appears to promise a boon to humanity. So far, CytImmune has tested the technology only in the veterinary arena with dogs and mice. The process has proved effective. Next, there is the commitment by NIH to test the new technology in humans.
Copyright © 2002 Russ Barnes