by David Forrest, Sc.D., P.E., President IMM

This five-day event was the sixth in the series of biannual conferences on nanomaterials, and this was the second time the conference was held in the United States. Unfortunately, in the wake of September 11th, attendance was down about 30%, to about 400 people-with some international researchers missing due to difficulties obtaining visas into the United States. The stated objectives were to, " . . . address the key issues associated with the science and technology of nanostructured materials and to promote their commercialization for both near- and long-term applications." The conference was chaired by Dr. Lawrence Kabacoff, Office of Naval Research, Prof. Enrique Lavernia, University of California, Irvine, and Dr. Michel Trudeau, IREQ, Hydro-Quebec.

For this attendee, the highlights of the conference were talks by Merrilea Mayo, Mathias Werner, and Kazuo Furuya. Mayo (previously at Penn State University where she has done solid work on nanocrystalline ceramics) is now heavily involved in science policy issues. She is the Director of GUIRR (the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable organization within the National Academies), a co-founder of ASTRA (the Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America), and vice-president of MRS (the Materials Research Society). Mayo's message was that the physical sciences do an abysmal job lobbying the government for financial support. Case in point: After 9/11, NIH received $1.5B additional funding to develop cures for biological attacks; NSF DOE, and DOD received $0 additional funding to develop sensors that would help prevent biological attacks. Funding for nanotechnology pales in comparison (~$600M vs. $ tens of billions) to funding for biotechnology, but she feels that nanotechnology support could be much greater than it is because it inspires the imagination (citing Star Trek's "nanoprobes"), offers solutions for things we are afraid of (e.g., terrorism), and provides opportunity for leadership (political ramifications of not supporting it-lost jobs, not getting re-elected). Unfortunately, she notes, nanotechnology has no constituency; there is virtually no public support for investment in the physical sciences, including nanotechnology, and this is a problem. Those readers who want to do something about this should consider well-written letters to the special legislative assistants of your Senators; see the ASTRA website.

Werner is on the Microtechnology Innovation Team at Deutsche Bank AG. He showed some results from what looked like a comprehensive market analysis they are performing on nanotechnology (study available Q3/Q4 2002). They estimate that the current market size of nanotechnology products is greater than $116 billion, excluding electronics, and $300 billion total. The nanomaterials market size is expected to reach $29.4B per year by 2006. They see three areas of high growth development: self-assembly, nanotubes, and molecular manufacturing. To the best of my knowledge this was the only time in the entire conference that molecular manufacturing was cited explicitly, and Werner did not elaborate on how he thought molecular manufacturing would play into the market or when. Most of his talk centered around carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which are projected to capture 25% of the nanotechnology market by 2006. He cited CNTs' high strength and maximum current density as key advantages, and the current price (~$30/kg) as the biggest drawback (but they expect significant price reductions). Werner also noted that the impact of CNTs on health is not fully explored: nanotubes look like asbestos under the SEM, although long-term exposure studies have not been performed. Products taking advantage of CNTs' mechanical strength and molecular electronic devices would be good market plays. Flat panel displays may use CNTs as emitters, but the Koreans and Japanese will continue to dominate this fiercely competitive $20 billion market.

Product highlights: Infineon is using CNTs as vias between layers to connect metallization (wires); eliminates problems of hot spots. IBM Zurich's Project Millipede: an AFM-based approach to high storage density in thin polymer. Nanolab on a chip: liquid handling from milliliters down to femtoliters via micro- and nano-fluidics (he may have cited Nanostream, although it's not in my notes). GFD Scalpels: deposition of diamond thin films on Si substrate yields extremely sharp knives, with a cutting edge radius of 3 nm; this product is used for eye surgery resulting in significantly reduced tissue damage.

Kazuo Furuya's talk provided general overviews on nanomaterials research in Japan. They have recently reorganized their funding agencies; MITI is now METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), and the Science & Technology Agency and the Ministry of Education have merged into MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). In materials, MEXT funds institutions such as the National Institute for Materials Science and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. Furuya described four basic areas in the Science and Technology Plan, although eight areas for promotion of R&D have actually been identified:

1. Life Science
2. Information Technology
3. Ocean Science, Earth Science, and Environmental Science
4. Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials
5. Aerospace
6. Disaster Prevention and Safety Measures
7. Nuclear Energy
8. Others (dissemination of lessons learned from failures)

There are clues that they are working on molecular manufacturing, but nothing I would call solid evidence. They seem to distinguish between materials science and nanotechnology: the former includes products such as nanomaterials and the latter is more a manufacturing technology characterized by phrases such as ". . . managing atoms and molecules in the order of nanometers. . . ," ". . . production technologies," and "Nanotechnology is expected to realize an industrial revolution in the 21st century." In "Flagship Projects" identified for the next 5-10 years, both nanomachines and manufacturing were included, and there was also a "Nanofoundries" component (coordinated at Osaka University) for nanomachines and devices. The latter may be referring to the Protonic Nanomachine Group, which is studying self-assembly (the real thing) and molecular motors in biological systems.

In all, there were 344 planned talks on a wide range of nanoscience topics:

Structure and Properties (the largest group of papers)
Optical and Electronic Materials
Magnetic Materials
Processing
Coatings
Fullerenes and Nanotubes (though very little here)
Particles and Clusters
Surface Phenomena
Catalysis and Energy Related Materials
Thermal Stability and Phase Transformations
Biomaterials

An interesting theme in the structure and properties talks was the reduced strength and ductility of nanocrystalline materials, which runs counter to effect grain size has in conventional materials. Recent evidence points to the possibility of having both fine grains and good tensile ductility (Carl Koch cited work on nanocrystalline cobalt, ball-milled zinc, ICG copper, and Al- and Mg-based two phase alloys). There was some debate about whether nanocrystalline materials actually are brittle even though they have low elongation; Ebrahimi offered a controversial explanation based on volume fractions of grains of different sizes (and ductilities) and their spatial distribution (though the model needs refinement, I found the argument to be compelling).

Final Comment: The virtual absence of papers on molecular manufacturing was a stark reminder of how far we have to go in turning the technical community's attention to molecular machines for atomically precise manufacturing. They either do not perceive the benefits, or believe the positional assembly approach to be so far removed from practicality as to be unworthy of attention (don't tell their ribosomes-they may go on strike!). There was talk of self-assembly but this always turned out to be a misnomer and really a reference to self-organizing systems, e.g., two-dimensional films of molecules that arrange themselves in regular arrays. There was no attention to complex 3-D self-assembly (as with a T4 bacteriophage) or positional assembly (as with molecular manufacturing). The scientists who study nanoscale phenomena need to be teamed with mechanical and manufacturing engineers, roboticists in particular, for substantial progress in this area to occur.