Month: June 2002

Mr_Farlops writes "Researchers in Finland and the United States have developed a method that may soon cheaply refine highly pure drugs. Using a membrane composed of tailored antibodies bound to the interiors of silca nanotubes, they discovered a way to separate wanted drug molecules from unwanted enantiomers (molecules with the same chemical composition but mirror-imaged structure.) and side products. The process might become commonly used in 5 to 10 years."

Gina Miller writes "A Nanotech Planet.com feature showcased Nanolayers — an Isreali company formed in 2001 to commercialize organic semiconducting materials developed at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The technology involves layering films of molecules on chips, producing organic semiconductors with electron mobility more than 30 times faster than previous methods. Initial applications may include flat-panel displays and semiconductor ICs."

The report containing the review of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) by the National Academies' National Research Council, is now available online. You can view the report, "Small Wonders, Endless Frontiers: A Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative", on an annoying page-by-page basis on the National Academies Press website, or order the print version.

Additonal information about the NRC review in the Nanodot post from 11 June 2002.

Gina Miller writes "The Chicago Sun-Times has an article ("Baxter, NU to team on nanoscience", June 19, 2002). Deerfield-based Baxter International a health care company has made an agreement to donate up to $2.25 million for nanoscience research at Northwestern University. The $450,000 a year over the next five years will allow Baxter right of first refusal over Northwestern's Institute for Bioengineering and Nanoscience in Advanced Medicine's research in this area. Potential applications are new cancer medical delivery systems not yet practiced."

Tanya writes "Eric Drexler has submitted the following critique:

Wolfram's argument that the properties of certain automata "must almost inevitably succeed in reproducing the fundamental features of relativity theory" (A New Kind of Science, p.520) appears to be misconceived. This may explain why he offers no examples of automata in which particle-like features move, as physical particles do, at a range of relative speeds.

He describes a broad class of automata (yielding "causal invariant" networks) that are insensitive to update order. In these, one can generate an invariant structure by adding nodes in any of many orders — for example, adding parallel layers at one or another angle. Differently angled slices of this sort look a bit like spacelike surfaces in moving frames of reference. Wolfram states (and makes central to his argument) that "one can interpret slices at different angles as corresponding to motion at different speeds" (p.521).

One must ask, however, motion of what? Since these networks are insensitive to update order, differing update patterns can make no difference to structures within a network, hence tell us nothing about the relative motion of any particle-like features it may contain. Angled update slices do not necessarily correspond to motion of anything within the model world.

If causal invariant networks naturally modeled motion, then one would expect Wolfram's book to include pictures showing streaks corresponding to variable-speed particles, but it does not. Offered neither a coherent argument nor a concrete example, we are left with a model of physics that lacks a model of relative motion."

Gina Miller writes "June 18, 2002 Business Week Online carries a special report, Nanotech: Big Dreams, Small Steps. The author, Alex Salkever, paints a picture of nanotechnology making slow progress in the market and that the previously predicted forecast of today, has yet to arrive. Several opinions are voiced on the applications that should arrive in the next five years, such as diagnostic technologies and materials to aid in enabling gene chips. The article goes on to discuss even further timeline applications, such as nanoscale electronics and nanoscale drug delivery systems.

Other stories from Business Week:

• Business Week takes a positive look at nanotech
• Business Week profiles tech "gurus"
• Business Week: "It's a Nano World""

Gina Miller writes "Chemists at Washington University's Buhro group in St. Louis have created what is hailed as boron nanowhiskers. These are the first of these type of crystalline nanowires, using chemical vapor deposition, at a scale of 20 to 200 nanometers. Carbon has been thus far mainly used, but has been limited as a conductor. The new boron produced particles are more consistant and can be doped to increase conductivity, although the results are more varied in size and structure. The researchers have a glint in their eye for creating boron nanotubes, but have yet to figure that out. The application could be another alternative for the potential of nanoscale electronic wires."

Two articles on the Small Times website describe presentations at the Nanotech Planet conference held in Munich, Germany on 17 & 18 June 2002.

• "Europe longs to play catch-up in nanotech commercialization", by Kyle James, 19 June 2002:
  The 50-odd scientists, engineers and venture capitalists at this European Nanotech Planet Conference gathered here to talk business and look at ways Europe might bridge the "disconnect," as some were calling it, between the research lab and the board room.
  The conference verdict was that Europe is very strong on the scientific side, but when it comes to getting its new findings to the market, Europe needs to play catch-up.
  "If you look at the number of articles in academic journals, Europe is on a par with the U.S.," said Meyya Meyyappan, director of NASA's Center for Nanotechnology at the Ames Research Center. But when it comes to the number of companies and new opportunities, he continued, Europe is bringing up the rear.
• "Gun-shy European VC firms want revenue plans, not hype", by Kyle James, 20 June 2002:
  "People don't buy technology, they buy products. So concentrate on the products." That was the gospel preached at Nanotech Planet in Munich, a two-day conference devoted to nanotechnology business in Europe. The engineers and venture capitalists hammering that message home seemed intent on converting scientists into businesspeople ñ or at least instilling in them the fact that any nanobusiness has to focus on the business part of the equation as much as on the science.

Gina Miller writes "IBM reported using MEMS/NEMS technology to achieve a data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch. The research project, code-named "Millipede," uses an array of 1024 (32 x 32) silicon cantilever AFM tips in a 3-mm square to make indentations 10 nm in diameter in a thin polymer film. Bits are written by heating the cantilever to 400 C, which softens the polymer film, and read at 300 C, where the polymer is not soft. Data is erased by using the tip to surround the data pit with a series of overlapping pits that fill in the old pit. The authors achieved more than 100,000 write/overwrite cycles to demonstrate this capability. They are currently using electronics that achieve kilobit-per-second data rates with individual tips, but expect to do much better with better electronics. A technical report on the Millipede project published in the June 2002 inaugural issue of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology can be downloaded from the IBM page. Soooo, the big question for nanodot readers, could this AFM array be useful for molecular manufacturing?"

Gina Miller writes "The EE Times reports that a research team in Denmark and France used a large, table-shaped organic molecule (C₉₀H₉₈) as a template to induce a copper surface to form a wire of copper atoms. At room temperature the organic molecules will bind to the edges of one atom-thick terraces on the copper surface. At lower temperatures, where the copper atoms stay put, an STM tip can be used to nudge the organic molecule away from the edge. Since the copper atoms had lined up under the table molecule at higher temperatures, there is now a small segment of a wire on the surface: one copper atom thick, two copper atoms wide, and 8 copper atoms long. Could these molecular templates be used to make wires to link components on a copper surface together into circuits? The research was originally published in the April 12, 2002 issue of Science."