Month: April 2005

Plan now to apply for a unique two-year master's program in nanotech in Europe: "1. The nanosciences are multidisciplinary: the challenge is to instil in the students the power to communicate and think across the boundaries of the traditional scientific disciplines. Notably, the aim is not to educate 'multispecialists'. Students receive a basic training in all disciplines, and choose a specialization within one of these disciplines. Special courses are designed to offer a multidisciplinary view on this research field…3. The EMM-nano is strongly research-connected: students spend at least one fourth of the programme on their own research project in a research environment of internationally renowned quality; course modules are strongly related to ongoing research and are taught by research professionals." Europeans can still apply this year; others must wait until next year. Courses are in English.

A new report from Lux Research and Foley & Lardner, "The Nanotech Intellectual Property Landscape," echos what Foresight members have been hearing from Ted Sabety at both of our 2004 conferences: there's a problem in nanotech patents. "Our comprehensive patent review shows that the patent landscape for these materials is complex and fragmented. Because so many patents have been filed relating to nanomaterials, and so many of them seem to overlap, companies that want to use these building blocks in products will be forced to license patents from many different sources in order to do so"…"nanotech winners and losers could be decided by courts and not consumers." A bad situation.–CP

Adam Keiper points us at an editorial in The New Atlantis titled "Assessing the Nanotech Revolution." The concluding paragraph: "A preliminary report from the [National Research Council] committee is expected in June 2005, with a final report to follow early next year. It is our hope that the committee will offer a clear analysis of the technical potential of molecular manufacturing, and a clear recommendation on whether federal nanotechnology funds should be allocated toward theoretical and practical research into molecular manufacturing. A clear statement from the committee will help resolve the discrepancy between what Congress expects and what federal funds in fact support."

The Nanotech Company has published a white paper titled "Nano-Savvy Journalism – 7 things every reporter should know before writing about nanotechnology and 7 questions to ask every nano company," currently available on request using a button on their homepage. It's good overall but needs at least two key tweaks, one on quantum effects and one on nanoscale robotics. Read more for details.

Physorg.com is reporting that scientists led by Xiang Zhang at UCB have a paper in Science documenting the ability to do "optical" imaging in the range of 40-60nm. They are using 365nm UV radiation and a silver film "superlens" with a negative refractive index to transcend the normal diffraction limits of optical imaging. Their results are nearly an order of magnitude smaller than conventional optical microscopy methods. Optical imaging is faster than electron microscope imaging because you don't have to scan the e-beam across the material being imaged.

One application which may push its development would be the direct imaging of semiconductor chips as the pass through the next two generations of photolithography at 65nm and 45-40nm. It is also worth noting that at these dimensions one could probably make a movie recording the motion of Drexler's classical assembler arm performing assembly processes.

Bob Schreib Jr. writes "Dear Sirs, This is a recap of an idea that I have already submitted to pretty much all of the forensic science sites on the web. The idea is UPC-Bullet-Tagging. That is, let's use Nanotechnology techniques from the microchip industry to etch microscopic UPC (Universal Product Codes)onto tiny sections or micro-rods of ceramic or stainless steel, and install them inside of ALL newly-manufactured bullets."

More…

Science Daily is documenting that Zhiyu Hu and associates, researchers at ORNL has developed a method for binding platinum nanoparticles to glass wool fibers that will enable a nano-catalytic reaction (aren't *all* catalytic reactions "nano-" by definition?) to allow self-combustion of methanol at temperatures ranging from room temperature to 600 deg. C.

A number of sources are reporting (here, here & here) that a group lead by Prof. Massood Tahib-Azar at Case Western Reserve University has developed faster and cheaper methods for growing (and welding?) carbon nanotubes potentially for the purpose of wiring shrinking Microelectronic circuits.

The only problem I see is that although it is widely reported, there appear to be few details on the method(s) other than the fact that they are "growing" the nanotubes from "seeds". In that respect it sounds similar to the methods used to grow silicon nanobridges which were previously discussed on Nanodot.

Nanobreakthrough or nanohype?

Azonano is pointing out here the award of a series of the 2005 NanoVic prizes for innovative nanoscale research in a variety of areas in Australia. These include such areas as surface treatments for wood products, textile applications and solar cell engineering.

They also discuss the NanoSolve^TM additive developed by Zyvex that uses carbon nanotubes for the engineering of stronger epoxy composites as well as a number of other developments in various aspects of nanotechnology R&D.

Betterhmans is reporting on progress of scientists at USC in combining several nanoscale technologies (transferrin based transport vehicles with small interfering RNA segments (siRNAs)) to effectively combat cancer, in this case Ewing's sarcoma, a type of cancer which impacts children. Interfering RNAs are small RNA strands which preferentially bind to complementary messenger RNA (mRNA). This activates cellular processes, presumably evolved to defend against double stranded RNA viruses, that destroy the double stranded RNA effectively reducing or eliminating the activity of the protein normally produced by the specific mRNA targeted by the siRNA.

The article with links to background information is here. There is significant potential for using this type of therapy to combat other types of cancer where the overexpression of a specific gene or protein is the primary cause of the disease.

While this is not diamondoid molecular nanotechnology it it can legitimately be considered molecular nanotechnology because it is nanoscale, it is based on precision activity at the nanoscale level and takes advantage of molecular processes and machinery normally found in cells.