The nano ball is rolling
The first products of the nanotechnology era will likely emerge without great fanfare. General Motors, for instance, is experimenting with passive nano materials for making new footboards and other auto parts.
Next year, new microprocessors and other computer chips will technically be nanotechnology products because the average size of their internal circuits will measure 90 nanometres. These chips will be faster than current chips, but will largely be made of the same materials and function the same way.
As time goes on though, the funky nature of products with ultrasmall components will emerge. In its labs, IBM has developed a postage stamp-size memory device that can store approximately 25 million textbook pages. If all goes well, such storage devices could be on the market by 2005.
In a decade or so, carbon nanotubes, strings of carbon molecules that act like wires, could begin to be incorporated into microprocessors, gradually replacing copper wires. Not only would this make computer chips faster and more energy-efficient, they would likely be cheaper to manufacture. With current chip manufacturing methods, each transistor has to be precisely laid down through lithography, a time-consuming process that costs billions of dollars. By contrast, carbon circuits will form themselves, with the process being controlled through the laws of physics and chemistry.
"It gives you the ability to conduct electricity as we can today but with smaller conductors," Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report , said in an interview last week. "The first guy to figure out how to make these consistently will be a billionaire."
National governments are also funding research. After the United States dedicated US$422 million toward nano research in 2001, the Japanese followed with a US$410 million project. Europe and the rest of the world have sunk US$425 million into nano projects.
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