posted on December 21, 2002 12:11:35 PM new
I thought this was a pretty interesting article. It's a bit long, but I hope you find it interesting too.
There isn't a nano-name company
among this year's BW50 companies,
and there won't be next year, either. But
there are plenty of hopefuls. With all the
hype about nanotechnology now swirling around Wall Street, you
have no doubt already encountered some nanonewcomer with a catchy name
like Nanogram, NanoOpto, Nanophase, NanoProducts, Nanosphere, or
Technanogy.
More than 300 nano-whippersnappers in the U.S.
and overseas are targeting what promises to be a
new Industrial Revolution. Nanotechnology will
leave virtually no business untouched--or
unscathed. The ability to create materials from
building blocks the size of a virus (page 182) will
unleash unprecedented capabilities. Autos and
airplanes, chemicals and plastics, computers and
chips, cosmetics and drugs--all of these industries,
and plenty more, are facing upheavals that could
make the advent of the Internet seem like a minor
adjustment.
Tiny upstarts aren't the only ones noticing that small
is beautiful. Nano is receiving enthusiastic scrutiny
from some big companies in the Standard & Poor's
500-stock index. Led by IBM (IBM ), Lucent
Technologies (LU ), and Hewlett-Packard (HWP ),
along with Samsung (SSNLF ) and Siemens (SI ),
industrial heavyweights are pumping significant sums
into nanotech research, as are governments around
the world. A new study from CMP Cientifica, a
market researcher in Madrid, says last year's
worldwide government figure topped $1.2 billion
(page 184). This year, the private and public
sectors will probably spend $2 billion apiece on
nano.
For insurance, big-name companies also are
investing in nano-newbies--or teaming up with
them. BASF (BF ), ChevronTexaco (CVX ),
DuPont (DD ), and NEC (NIPNY )) are tapping
the expertise of startups, most of which were
founded by university researchers. Mitsubishi
Electric Corp. (MIELY ) last year set up a $100
million fund to invest in nanotech, and Dow
Chemical Co. (DOW ) in 2000 bought Dendritech
Inc.'s dendrimer technology to serve as the basis for
a future family of nanoscale polymers. All told,
venture capitalists and corporate funds will probably plow $1 billion into nano
investments this year, twice what they invested in 2000, says S. Joshua
Wolfe, a partner at New York's Lux Capital Group.
However, Lux Capital has yet to place its first nanotech bet. "We get a lot of
business plans for nano-X," says Wolfe. "The first thing we do is strip off that
nano prefix and look at what these guys are really doing." Often, it's not
nanotech at all. "Because nanotechnology is clearly the Next Big Thing," he
adds, "it's attracting a lot of P.T. Barnums." One company wanted to
promote a new drug based on small particles as a nanodrug, even though it
knew the ingredients fell short of the nanotech scale.
To purists, nanotech means things with one dimension no bigger than 100
nanometers, or 100 billionths of a meter. Buckyballs--those
soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules discovered in 1985 by a team led by
Rice University's Richard E. Smalley--are roughly 1 nm in diameter. Carbon
nanotubes are about 1.4 nm thick. The latest entrants: slightly fatter
nanotube-like wires made from silicon, gallium nitride, and other
semiconducting materials.
Despite some misleading hype, there's no shortage of genuine articles. Take
nanowire startup Nanosys Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., which uses technology
developed by Harvard University chemist Charles M. Lieber. Nanosys was
launched in 2001 by venture capitalist Larry Bock, who had retired a year
earlier with 14 life-science startups under his belt. Around that time, "I was
reading Science magazine and suddenly realized there were almost as many
articles on nanotech as on biotech," he recalls.
Fascinated, he started visiting researchers. When he got to Lieber, "it was an
`aha!' moment," Bock says. Because Lieber's wires are made from the same
materials used for semiconductor lasers, "they have something that carbon
nanotubes don't--optical properties." Seeing huge potential in tiny lasers for
miniature optical sensors capable of detecting single molecules, Bock came
out of retirement. "This is a much bigger opportunity than any of my previous
starts," he declares.
So far, though, the nano market is small potatoes. Estimated sales of
buckyballs, nanotubes, and other nanomaterials vary widely, but a reasonable
estimate might be $50 million. However, products made partly with
nanomaterials were worth $26.5 billion last year, reckons NanoMat, a
materials-oriented network of research labs and companies based in
Karlsruhe, Germany. Current products include chemicals produced with
microscopic catalytic particles, sun lotions with invisibly small zinc-oxide
flakes to shield against ultraviolet rays, emulsifiers that keep paint from
separating, and coatings that make eyeglass lenses more scratch resistant or
extend the life of industrial tools. "There are lots of these unexciting, unsexy
nanoproducts out there," says Edward K. Moran, director of one of Deloitte
& Touche's technology-consulting practices.
More alluring products can be found in company labs, but many need a year
or two to reach the market because new manufacturing systems also must be
developed. Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc. (MOT ), and other
electronics giants are working on supersharp flat-screen displays for TVs,
computers, and handheld gizmos. Today's LCDs--power-efficient as they
are--are still big drains on batteries. An array of nano-tubes spitting electrons
at the screen's backside would use just a fraction of that power. Samsung
hopes to ship its first nanotube TVs in time for Christmas next year.
Nanotechnology will also benefit owners of current laptops. Batteries made
with carbon nanotubes and nanoscale lithium particles could store higher
energy densities, last twice as long, and recharge faster. Because nanotubes
are the best heat conductors yet found, they could help keep the batteries in
electric cars charged by recovering the energy lost as heat when a driver
stomps on a car's brakes. And nanotube gas-tank clusters could store
hydrogen for fuel-cell-powered cars that use don't burn gasoline, thus curbing
pollution.
Nanotubes are also stronger than steel, so long filaments could create
supertough, fiber-reinforced plastics. These materials could slash the weight
of planes, spaceships, and ground vehicles. The Pentagon figures nanotubes
will yield better radar-absorbing coatings and help make its planes, ships, and
tanks stealthier. If nanotech lives up to its promise in aerospace, says David
O. Swain, chief technology officer at Boeing Co. (BA ), it will be an
"unbelievable breakthrough." For space travel, he adds, its importance would
be "almost a bigger step than going from propellers to jets."
Pharmaceutical companies can't
wait to use nanotech to discover
and deliver drugs. Today, highly
sensitive microchips containing
intact DNA can spot interactions
between candidate antibiotics and
target bugs, for example.
Remarkable as they are, such
chips could be stuffed with
100,000 times more little chemical
labs--each of which is 100,000
times more sensitive--if they were
made with nanotubes, according
to Chad A. Mirkin, director of
Northwestern University's Institute for Nanotechnology.
To deliver a drug to a precise target and thus minimize side effects,
buckyballs can be assembled into shapes that fit snugly into receptors on the
surface of specific cells. The balls could be coated with drugs that disrupt the
cell's reproductive cycle, Mirkin explains. Such treatments are now in the
works for cancer, AIDS, and other diseases.
What's more, nanotubes are so thin that they can penetrate the skin without
pain. So Therafuse Inc., a Vista (Calif.) startup, is developing a skin patch for
diabetics. It will draw blood through nanostraws to monitor glucose levels
and inject insulin when required.
(If you're still awake, the rest of the story can be found here
posted on December 21, 2002 04:35:20 PM new
They've built motors that you need a microscope to view. Look into your scope and see teeny tiny gears whirling around! The most amazing thing I saw was a tiny "pump". Equipped with a sensor that looked for a certain protein or something, it would look for cancerous cells. Once found, the pump would turn on and administer a poison to the cell. This is one of several technologies that are in infant stages that are as significant as electricity was to the industrial revolution.
posted on December 21, 2002 05:22:28 PM new
The holy grail of nano is the idea of self replicating microscopic robots.
However: You heard it here first. What is going to happen first is that they will have something similar to a factory or a lab on a chip. A chip using extentions of the technologies to produce integrated circuits that can do things like process blood to check for all the antibodies, disease organisms, and chemistry. Something that pressed against the skin would give you an excellant snap shot of a person's health in seconds. Like Star trek... Or a chip that can test the environment it is in - air or water and tell you the state of pollution in seconds - including warn about chemical or biological attack.
