History of nanotechnology
Encyclopedia
The history of nanotechnology traces the development of the concepts and experimental work falling under the broad category of nanotechnology
. Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. The emergence of nanotechnology in the 1980s was caused by the convergence of experimental advances such as the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope
in 1981 and the discovery of fullerene
s in 1985, with the elucidation and popularization of a conceptual framework for the goals of nanotechnology beginning with the 1986 publication of the book Engines of Creation
. The field was subject to growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, with prominent debates about both its potential implications
as well as the feasibility of the applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology
, and with governments moving to promote and fund research
into nanotechnology. The early 2000s also saw the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology, although these were limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials
rather than the transformative
applications envisioned by the field.
meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959, which is often held to have provided inspiration for the field of nanotechnology. Feynman had described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction
would become more important.
After Feynman's death, scholars studying the historical development of nanotechnology have concluded that his actual role in catalyzing nanotechnology research was limited, based on recollections from many of the people active in the nascent field in the 1980s and 1990s. Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Carolina, found that the published versions of Feynman’s talk had a negligible influence in the twenty years after it was first published, as measured by citations in the scientific literature, and not much more influence in the decade after the Scanning Tunneling Microscope was invented in 1981. Subsequently, interest in “Plenty of Room” in the scientific literature greatly increased in the early 1990s. This is probably because the term “nanotechnology” gained serious attention just before that time, following its use by K. Eric Drexler
in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
, which took the Feynman concept of a billion tiny factories and added the idea that they could make more copies of themselves via computer control instead of control by a human operator; and in a cover article headlined "Nanotechnology", published later that year in a mass-circulation science-oriented magazine, OMNI
. Toumey’s analysis also includes comments from distinguished scientists in nanotechnology who say that “Plenty of Room” did not influence their early work, and in fact most of them had not read it until a later date.
These and other developments hint that the retroactive rediscovery of Feynman’s “Plenty of Room” gave nanotechnology a packaged history that provided an early date of December 1959, plus a connection to the charisma and genius of Richard Feynman. Feynman's stature as a Nobel laureate and as an iconic figure in 20th century science surely helped advocates of nanotechnology and provided a valuable intellectual link to the past.
was the first to use the term "nano-technology" in a 1974 conference, to describe semiconductor processes such as thin film deposition and ion beam milling exhibiting characteristic control on the order of a nanometer. His definition was, "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule."
In the 1980s the idea of nanotechnology as a deterministic, rather than stochastic
, handling of individual atoms and molecules was conceptually explored in depth by K. Eric Drexler , who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and two influential books.
In 1979, Drexler encountered Feynman's provocative 1959 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" . The term "nanotechnology", which had been coined by Taniguchi in 1974, was unknowingly appropriated by Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
, which proposed the idea of a nanoscale "assembler" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity. He also first published the term "grey goo
" to describe what might happen if a hypothetical self-replicating molecular nanotechnology went out of control. Drexler's vision of nanotechnology is often called "Molecular Nanotechnology
" (MNT) or "molecular manufacturing," and Drexler at one point proposed the term "zettatech" which never became popular.
His 1991 Ph.D. work at the MIT Media Lab
was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology and (after some editing) his thesis, "Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation," was published as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. Drexler founded the Foresight Institute
in 1986 with the mission of "Preparing for nanotechnology.” Drexler is no longer a member of the Foresight Institute.
science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope
(STM). These developments led to the discovery of fullerenes in 1985 and the structural assignment of carbon nanotubes a few years later
, an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level, was developed in 1981 by Gerd Binnig
and Heinrich Rohrer
at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1986. Binnig, Calvin Quate
and Christoph Gerber
invented the first atomic force microscope
in 1986. The first commercially available atomic force microscope was introduced in 1989.
IBM researcher Don Eigler was the first to manipulate atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope in 1989. He used 35 Xenon
atoms to spell out the IBM
logo. He shared the 2010 Kavli Prize
in Nanoscience for this work.
had existed for nearly a century before they became associated with nanotechnology. The first observations and size measurements of nanoparticles had been made during the first decade of the 20th century by Richard Adolf Zsigmondy
, winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
, who made a detailed study of gold sols and other nanomaterials
with sizes down to 10 nm using an ultramicroscope
which was capable of visualizing particles much smaller than the light
wavelength
. Zsigmondy was also the first to use the term "nanometer" explicitly for characterizing particle size. In the 1920s, Irving Langmuir
, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Katharine B. Blodgett introduced the concept of a monolayer
, a layer of material one molecule thick. In the early 1950s, Derjaguin and Abrikosova conducted the first measurement of surface forces.
In 1974 the process of atomic layer deposition
for depositing uniform thin films one atomic layer at a time was developed and patented by Tuomo Suntola and co-workers in Finland.
In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor nanocrystal
s were studied. This led to a fast increasing number of semiconductor
nanoparticles of quantum dots.
s were discovered in 1985 by Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley
, and Robert Curl
, who together won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
. Smalley's research in physical chemistry investigated formation of inorganic and semiconductor clusters using pulsed molecular beams and time of flight mass spectrometry
. As a consequence of this expertise, Curl introduced him to Kroto in order to investigate a question about the constituents of astronomical dust. These are carbon rich grains expelled by old stars such as R Corona Borealis. The result of this collaboration was the discovery of C60 and the fullerenes as the third allotropic
form of carbon. Subsequent discoveries included the endohedral fullerenes
, and the larger family of fullerenes the following year.
The discovery of carbon nanotubes is largely attributed to Sumio Iijima
of NEC
in 1991, although carbon nanotubes have been produced and observed under a variety of conditions prior to 1991. Iijima's discovery of multi-walled carbon nanotubes in the insoluble material of arc-burned graphite rods in 1991 and Mintmire, Dunlap, and White's independent prediction that if single-walled carbon nanotubes could be made, then they would exhibit remarkable conducting properties helped create the initial buzz that is now associated with carbon nanotubes. Nanotube research accelerated greatly following the independent discoveries by Bethune at IBM and Iijima at NEC of single-walled carbon nanotubes and methods to specifically produce them by adding transition-metal catalysts to the carbon in an arc discharge.
In the early 1990s Huffman and Kraetschmer, of the University of Arizona
, discovered how to synthesize and purify large quantities of fullerenes. This opened the door to their characterization and functionalization by hundreds of investigators in government and industrial laboratories. Shortly after, rubidium doped C60 was found to be a mid temperature (Tc = 32 K) superconductor. At a meeting of the Materials Research Society in 1992, Dr. T. Ebbesen (NEC) described to a spellbound audience his discovery and characterization of carbon nanotubes. This event sent those in attendance and others downwind of his presentation into their laboratories to reproduce and push those discoveries forward. Using the same or similar tools as those used by Huffman and Kratschmere, hundreds of researchers further developed the field of nanotube-based nanotechnology.
federal nanotechnology research and development
program. Its goals are to advance a world-class nanotechnology research and development (R&D) program, foster the transfer of new technologies into products for commercial and public benefit, develop and sustain educational resources, a skilled workforce, and the supporting infrastructure and tools to advance nanotechnology, and support responsible development of nanotechnology. The initiative was spearheaded by Mihail Roco
, who formally proposed the National Nanotechnology Initiative to the Office of Science and Technology Policy
during the Clinton administration in 1999, and was a key architect in its development. He is currently the Senior Advisor for Nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation
, as well as the founding chair of the National Science and Technology Council
subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology.
President Bill Clinton
advocated nanotechnology
development. In a 21 January 2000 speech at the California Institute of Technology
, Clinton said, "Some of our research goals may take twenty or more years to achieve, but that is precisely why there is an important role for the federal government." Feynman's stature and concept of atomically precise fabrication played a role in securing funding for nanotechnology research, as mentioned in President Clinton's speech:
President George W. Bush
further increased funding for nanotechnology. In 2003 Bush signed into law the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which authorizes expenditures for five of the participating agencies totaling US$3.63 billion over four years. The NNI budget supplement for Fiscal Year 2009 provides $1.5 billion dollars to the NNI, reflecting steady growth in the nanotechnology investment.
, then Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems
, in the April 2000 issue of Wired
magazine. In the article, he argues that "Our most powerful 21st-century technologies — robotics
, genetic engineering
, and nanotech
— are threatening to make humans an endangered species
." Joy argues that developing technologies provide a much greater danger to humanity than any technology before it has ever presented. In particular, he focuses on genetics
, nanotechnology
and robotics
. He argues that 20th century technologies of destruction, such as the nuclear bomb, were limited to large governments, due to the complexity and cost of such devices, as well as the difficulty in acquiring the required materials. He also voices concern about increasing computer power. His worry is that computers will eventually become more intelligent than we are, leading to such dystopian scenarios as robot rebellion
. He notably quotes the Unabomber on this topic. After the publication of the article, Bill Joy suggested assessing technologies to gauge their implicit dangers, as well as having scientists refuse to work on technologies that have the potential to cause harm.
In the AAAS
Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2001 article titled A Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists, Bill Joy was criticized for having technological tunnel vision on his prediction, by failing to consider social factors. In Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near
, he questioned the regulation of potentially dangerous technology, asking "Should we tell the millions of people afflicted with cancer and other devastating conditions that we are canceling the development of all bioengineered treatments because there is a risk that these same technologies may someday be used for malevolent purposes?".
which features an artificial swarm of nanorobots which develop intellegence and threaten their human inventors. The novel generated concern within the nanotechnology community that the novel could negatively affect public perception of nanotechnology by creating fear of a similar scenario in real life.
s, as advocated by Eric Drexler. In 2001 he introduced scientific objections to them attacking the notion of universal assemblers in a 2001 Scientific American
article, leading to a rebuttal
later that year from Drexler and colleagues, and eventually to an exchange of open letter
s in 2003.
Smalley criticized Drexler's work on nanotechnology as naive, arguing that chemistry is extremely complicated, reactions are hard to control, and that a universal assembler is science fiction. Smalley believed that such assemblers were not physically possible and introduced scientific objections to them. His two principal technical objections, which he had termed the “fat fingers problem" and the "sticky fingers problem”, argued against the feasibility of molecular assemblers being able to precisely select and place individual atoms. He also believed that Drexler’s speculations about apocalyptic dangers of molecular assemblers threaten the public support for development of nanotechnology.
Smalley first argued that "fat fingers" made MNT impossible. He later argued that nanomachines would have to resemble chemical enzymes more than Drexler's assemblers and could only work in water. He believed these would exclude the possibility of "molecular assemblers" that worked by precision picking and placing of individual atoms. Also, Smalley argued that nearly all of modern chemistry involves reactions that take place in a solvent (usually water), because the small molecules of a solvent contribute many things, such as lowering binding energies for transition states. Since nearly all known chemistry requires a solvent, Smalley felt that Drexler's proposal to use a high vacuum environment was not feasible.
Smalley also believed that Drexler's speculations about apocalyptic dangers of self-replicating machines that have been equated with "molecular assemblers" would threaten the public support for development of nanotechnology. To address the debate between Drexler and Smalley regarding molecular assemblers Chemical & Engineering News
published a point-counterpoint consisting of an exchange of letters that addressed the issues.
Drexler and coworkers responded to these two issues in a 2001 publication. Drexler and colleagues noted that Drexler never proposed universal assemblers able to make absolutely anything, but instead proposed more limited assemblers able to make a very wide variety of things. They challenged the relevance of Smalley's arguments to the more specific proposals advanced in Nanosystems. Drexler maintained that both were straw man
arguments, and in the case of enzymes, Prof. Klibanov wrote in 1994, "...using an enzyme in organic solvents eliminates several obstacles..." Drexler also addresses this in Nanosystems by showing mathematically that well designed catalysts can provide the effects of a solvent and can fundamentally be made even more efficient than a solvent/enzyme reaction could ever be. Drexler had difficulty in getting Smalley to respond, but in December 2003, Chemical and Engineering news carried a 4 part debate.
Ray Kurzweil spends four pages in his book 'The Singularity Is Near' to showing that Richard Smalley's arguments are not valid, and disputing them point by point. Kurzweil ends by stating that Drexler's visions are very practicable and even happening already.
and Royal Academy of Engineering
's 2004 report on the implications of nanoscience and nanotechnologies was inspired by Prince Charles' concerns about nanotechnology
, including molecular manufacturing. However, the report spent almost no time on molecular manufacturing. In fact, the word "Drexler
" appears only once in the body of the report (in passing), and "molecular manufacturing" or "molecular nanotechnology
" not at all. The report covers various risks of nanoscale technologies, such as nanoparticle toxicology. It also provides a useful overview of several nanoscale fields. (Someone more interested in nanoscale technologies should expand this description.) The report contains an annex (appendix) on grey goo
, which cites a weaker variation of Richard Smalley
's contested argument against molecular manufacturing. It concludes that there is no evidence that autonomous, self replicating nanomachines will be developed in the foreseeable future, and suggests that regulators should be more concerned with issues of nanoparticle toxicology.
. Examples include titanium dioxide
and zinc oxide
nanoparticle
s in sunscreen, cosmetics and some food products; silver nanoparticles
in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances such as Silver Nano
; carbon nanotube
s for stain-resistant textiles; and cerium oxide as a fuel catalyst. As of March 10, 2011, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
estimated that over 1300 manufacturer-identified nanotech products are publicly available, with new ones hitting the market at a pace of 3–4 per week.
The National Science Foundation
funded researcher David Berube to study the field of nanotechnology. His findings are published in the monograph Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz. This study concludes that much of what is sold as “nanotechnology” is in fact a recasting of straightforward materials science, which is leading to a “nanotech industry built solely on selling nanotubes, nanowires, and the like” which will “end up with a few suppliers selling low margin products in huge volumes." Further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies branded with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. According to Berube, there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of more ambitious and far-sighted work.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
. Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. The emergence of nanotechnology in the 1980s was caused by the convergence of experimental advances such as the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...
in 1981 and the discovery of fullerene
Fullerene
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in association football. Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes...
s in 1985, with the elucidation and popularization of a conceptual framework for the goals of nanotechnology beginning with the 1986 publication of the book Engines of Creation
Engines of Creation
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is a 1986 molecular nanotechnology book written by K. Eric Drexler with a foreword by Marvin Minsky. An updated version was released in 2007...
. The field was subject to growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, with prominent debates about both its potential implications
Implications of nanotechnology
The impact of nanotechnology extend from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, military applications, and communications....
as well as the feasibility of the applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials...
, and with governments moving to promote and fund research
Funding of science
Through history, the systems of economic support for scientists and their work have been important determinants of the character and pace of scientific research. The ancient foundations of the sciences were driven by practical and religious concerns and or the pursuit of philosophy more generally...
into nanotechnology. The early 2000s also saw the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology, although these were limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials
Nanomaterials
Nanomaterials is a field that takes a materials science-based approach to nanotechnology. It studies materials with morphological features on the nanoscale, and especially those that have special properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions...
rather than the transformative
Disruptive technology
A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network , displacing an earlier technology there...
applications envisioned by the field.
Richard Feynman
The American physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," at an American Physical SocietyAmerican Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...
meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959, which is often held to have provided inspiration for the field of nanotechnology. Feynman had described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction
Van der Waals force
In physical chemistry, the van der Waals force , named after Dutch scientist Johannes Diderik van der Waals, is the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between molecules other than those due to covalent bonds or to the electrostatic interaction of ions with one another or with neutral...
would become more important.
After Feynman's death, scholars studying the historical development of nanotechnology have concluded that his actual role in catalyzing nanotechnology research was limited, based on recollections from many of the people active in the nascent field in the 1980s and 1990s. Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Carolina, found that the published versions of Feynman’s talk had a negligible influence in the twenty years after it was first published, as measured by citations in the scientific literature, and not much more influence in the decade after the Scanning Tunneling Microscope was invented in 1981. Subsequently, interest in “Plenty of Room” in the scientific literature greatly increased in the early 1990s. This is probably because the term “nanotechnology” gained serious attention just before that time, following its use by K. Eric Drexler
K. Eric Drexler
Dr. Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology , from the 1970s and 1980s.His 1991 doctoral thesis at MIT was revised and published as...
in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
Engines of Creation
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is a 1986 molecular nanotechnology book written by K. Eric Drexler with a foreword by Marvin Minsky. An updated version was released in 2007...
, which took the Feynman concept of a billion tiny factories and added the idea that they could make more copies of themselves via computer control instead of control by a human operator; and in a cover article headlined "Nanotechnology", published later that year in a mass-circulation science-oriented magazine, OMNI
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
. Toumey’s analysis also includes comments from distinguished scientists in nanotechnology who say that “Plenty of Room” did not influence their early work, and in fact most of them had not read it until a later date.
These and other developments hint that the retroactive rediscovery of Feynman’s “Plenty of Room” gave nanotechnology a packaged history that provided an early date of December 1959, plus a connection to the charisma and genius of Richard Feynman. Feynman's stature as a Nobel laureate and as an iconic figure in 20th century science surely helped advocates of nanotechnology and provided a valuable intellectual link to the past.
Norio Taniguchi
The Japanese scientist Norio Taniguchi of the Tokyo University of ScienceTokyo University of Science
Tokyo University of Science is a private university of science and technology in Japan...
was the first to use the term "nano-technology" in a 1974 conference, to describe semiconductor processes such as thin film deposition and ion beam milling exhibiting characteristic control on the order of a nanometer. His definition was, "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule."
K. Eric Drexler
Stochastic
Stochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
, handling of individual atoms and molecules was conceptually explored in depth by K. Eric Drexler , who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and two influential books.
In 1979, Drexler encountered Feynman's provocative 1959 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" . The term "nanotechnology", which had been coined by Taniguchi in 1974, was unknowingly appropriated by Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
Engines of Creation
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is a 1986 molecular nanotechnology book written by K. Eric Drexler with a foreword by Marvin Minsky. An updated version was released in 2007...
, which proposed the idea of a nanoscale "assembler" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity. He also first published the term "grey goo
Grey goo
Grey goo is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario known as ecophagy .Self-replicating machines of the macroscopic variety were originally...
" to describe what might happen if a hypothetical self-replicating molecular nanotechnology went out of control. Drexler's vision of nanotechnology is often called "Molecular Nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials...
" (MNT) or "molecular manufacturing," and Drexler at one point proposed the term "zettatech" which never became popular.
His 1991 Ph.D. work at the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology and (after some editing) his thesis, "Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation," was published as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. Drexler founded the Foresight Institute
Foresight Institute
The Foresight Institute is a Palo Alto, California-based nonprofit organization for promoting transformative technologies. They sponsor conferences on molecular nanotechnology, publish reports, and produce a newsletter....
in 1986 with the mission of "Preparing for nanotechnology.” Drexler is no longer a member of the Foresight Institute.
Experimental advances
Nanotechnology and nanoscience got a boost in the early 1980s with two major developments: the birth of clusterCluster (physics)
In physics, the term clusters denotes small, multiatom particles. As a rule of thumb, any particle of somewhere between 3 and 3x107 atoms is considered a cluster. Two-atom particles are sometimes considered clusters as well....
science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...
(STM). These developments led to the discovery of fullerenes in 1985 and the structural assignment of carbon nanotubes a few years later
Invention of scanning probe microscopy
The scanning tunneling microscopeScanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...
, an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level, was developed in 1981 by Gerd Binnig
Gerd Binnig
Gerd Binnig is a German physicist, and a Nobel laureate.He was born in Frankfurt am Main and played in the ruins of the city during his childhood. His family lived partly in Frankfurt and partly in Offenbach am Main, and he attended school in both cities. At the age of 10, he decided to become a...
and Heinrich Rohrer
Heinrich Rohrer
Heinrich Rohrer is a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope .-Biography:...
at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
IBM Research - Zurich is the European branch of IBM Research and has been located in Rüschlikon, near Zurich, Switzerland since 1962.-Overview and history:...
, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
in 1986. Binnig, Calvin Quate
Calvin Quate
Calvin F. Quate was born on 7 December 1923 in Baker, Nevada. He is one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He is a professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University....
and Christoph Gerber
Christoph Gerber
Christoph Gerber is the director for Scientific Communication at the Institute of Physics, University of Basel.Christoph Gerber is the co-inventor of the atomic force microscope...
invented the first atomic force microscope
Atomic force microscope
Atomic force microscopy or scanning force microscopy is a very high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy, with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit...
in 1986. The first commercially available atomic force microscope was introduced in 1989.
IBM researcher Don Eigler was the first to manipulate atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope in 1989. He used 35 Xenon
Xenon
Xenon is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. The element name is pronounced or . A colorless, heavy, odorless noble gas, xenon occurs in the Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts...
atoms to spell out the IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
logo. He shared the 2010 Kavli Prize
Kavli Prize
The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 through a joint venture between the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and The Kavli Foundation...
in Nanoscience for this work.
Advances in interface and colloid science
Interface and colloid scienceInterface and colloid science
Interface and colloid science is an interdisciplinary intersection of branches of chemistry, physics, nanoscience and other fields dealing with colloids, heterogeneous systems consisting of a mechanical mixture of particles between 1 nm and 1000 nm dispersed in a continuous...
had existed for nearly a century before they became associated with nanotechnology. The first observations and size measurements of nanoparticles had been made during the first decade of the 20th century by Richard Adolf Zsigmondy
Richard Adolf Zsigmondy
Richard Adolf Zsigmondy was an Austrian-Hungarian chemist and Nobel laureate for chemistry known for his research in colloids. The crater Zsigmondy on the Moon is named in his honour....
, winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
, who made a detailed study of gold sols and other nanomaterials
Nanomaterials
Nanomaterials is a field that takes a materials science-based approach to nanotechnology. It studies materials with morphological features on the nanoscale, and especially those that have special properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions...
with sizes down to 10 nm using an ultramicroscope
Ultramicroscope
An ultramicroscope is a system of illumination for viewing tiny particles. When the diameter of a particle is below or near the wavelength of light , the particle cannot be seen in a light microscope with the usual method of illumination. The ultramicroscope system is based on light scattering, not...
which was capable of visualizing particles much smaller than the light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
wavelength
Wavelength
In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...
. Zsigmondy was also the first to use the term "nanometer" explicitly for characterizing particle size. In the 1920s, Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist and physicist. His most noted publication was the famous 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his...
, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Katharine B. Blodgett introduced the concept of a monolayer
Monolayer
- Chemistry :A Langmuir monolayer or insoluble monolayer is a one-molecule thick layer of an insoluble organic material spread onto an aqueous subphase. Traditional compounds used to prepare Langmuir monolayers are amphiphilic materials that possess a hydrophilic headgroup and a hydrophobic tail...
, a layer of material one molecule thick. In the early 1950s, Derjaguin and Abrikosova conducted the first measurement of surface forces.
In 1974 the process of atomic layer deposition
Atomic layer deposition
Atomic layer deposition is a thin film deposition technique that is based on the sequential use of a gas phase chemical process. The majority of ALD reactions use two chemicals, typically called precursors. These precursors react with a surface one-at-a-time in a sequential manner...
for depositing uniform thin films one atomic layer at a time was developed and patented by Tuomo Suntola and co-workers in Finland.
In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor nanocrystal
Nanocrystal
B. D. Fahlman has described a nanocrystal as any nanomaterial with at least one dimension ≤ 100nm and that is singlecrystalline.-Summary:More properly, any material with a dimension of less than 1 micrometre, i.e., 1000 nanometers, should be referred to as a nanoparticle, not a nanocrystal...
s were studied. This led to a fast increasing number of semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
nanoparticles of quantum dots.
Discovery of fullerenes
FullereneFullerene
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in association football. Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes...
s were discovered in 1985 by Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley
Richard Smalley
Richard Errett Smalley was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas...
, and Robert Curl
Robert Curl
Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. the son of a Methodist Minister is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas and is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Rice University....
, who together won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
. Smalley's research in physical chemistry investigated formation of inorganic and semiconductor clusters using pulsed molecular beams and time of flight mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.It is used for determining masses of particles, for determining the elemental composition of a sample or molecule, and for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and...
. As a consequence of this expertise, Curl introduced him to Kroto in order to investigate a question about the constituents of astronomical dust. These are carbon rich grains expelled by old stars such as R Corona Borealis. The result of this collaboration was the discovery of C60 and the fullerenes as the third allotropic
Allotropy
Allotropy or allotropism is the property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, known as allotropes of these elements...
form of carbon. Subsequent discoveries included the endohedral fullerenes
Endohedral fullerenes
Endohedral fullerenes are fullerenes that have additional atoms, ions, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. The first lanthanum C60 complex was synthesized in 1985 called La@C60. The @ sign in the name reflects the notion of a small molecule trapped inside a shell...
, and the larger family of fullerenes the following year.
The discovery of carbon nanotubes is largely attributed to Sumio Iijima
Sumio Iijima
Sumio Iijima is a Japanese physicist, often cited as the discoverer of carbon nanotubes. Although carbon nanotubes had been observed prior to his "discovery", Iijima's 1991 paper generated unprecedented interest in the carbon nanostructures and has since fueled intense research in the area of...
of NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
in 1991, although carbon nanotubes have been produced and observed under a variety of conditions prior to 1991. Iijima's discovery of multi-walled carbon nanotubes in the insoluble material of arc-burned graphite rods in 1991 and Mintmire, Dunlap, and White's independent prediction that if single-walled carbon nanotubes could be made, then they would exhibit remarkable conducting properties helped create the initial buzz that is now associated with carbon nanotubes. Nanotube research accelerated greatly following the independent discoveries by Bethune at IBM and Iijima at NEC of single-walled carbon nanotubes and methods to specifically produce them by adding transition-metal catalysts to the carbon in an arc discharge.
In the early 1990s Huffman and Kraetschmer, of the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, discovered how to synthesize and purify large quantities of fullerenes. This opened the door to their characterization and functionalization by hundreds of investigators in government and industrial laboratories. Shortly after, rubidium doped C60 was found to be a mid temperature (Tc = 32 K) superconductor. At a meeting of the Materials Research Society in 1992, Dr. T. Ebbesen (NEC) described to a spellbound audience his discovery and characterization of carbon nanotubes. This event sent those in attendance and others downwind of his presentation into their laboratories to reproduce and push those discoveries forward. Using the same or similar tools as those used by Huffman and Kratschmere, hundreds of researchers further developed the field of nanotube-based nanotechnology.
National Nanotechnology Initiative
The National Nanotechnology Initiative is a United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
federal nanotechnology research and development
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
program. Its goals are to advance a world-class nanotechnology research and development (R&D) program, foster the transfer of new technologies into products for commercial and public benefit, develop and sustain educational resources, a skilled workforce, and the supporting infrastructure and tools to advance nanotechnology, and support responsible development of nanotechnology. The initiative was spearheaded by Mihail Roco
Mihail Roco
Mihail Roco is the chair of the US National Science and Technology Council subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology , and is Senior Advisor for Nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation...
, who formally proposed the National Nanotechnology Initiative to the Office of Science and Technology Policy
Office of Science and Technology Policy
The Office of Science and Technology Policy is an office in the Executive Office of the President , established by Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.The director of this office is...
during the Clinton administration in 1999, and was a key architect in its development. He is currently the Senior Advisor for Nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, as well as the founding chair of the National Science and Technology Council
National Science and Technology Council
The National Science and Technology Council was established in the US by Executive Order 12881 on November 23, 1993.-History:The National Science and Technology Council was established in the US by Executive Order on November 23, 1993...
subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology.
President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
advocated nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
development. In a 21 January 2000 speech at the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, Clinton said, "Some of our research goals may take twenty or more years to achieve, but that is precisely why there is an important role for the federal government." Feynman's stature and concept of atomically precise fabrication played a role in securing funding for nanotechnology research, as mentioned in President Clinton's speech:
President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
further increased funding for nanotechnology. In 2003 Bush signed into law the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which authorizes expenditures for five of the participating agencies totaling US$3.63 billion over four years. The NNI budget supplement for Fiscal Year 2009 provides $1.5 billion dollars to the NNI, reflecting steady growth in the nanotechnology investment.
"Why the future doesn't need us"
"Why the future doesn't need us" is an article written by Bill JoyBill Joy
William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
, then Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, in the April 2000 issue of Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine. In the article, he argues that "Our most powerful 21st-century technologies — robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
, genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
, and nanotech
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
— are threatening to make humans an endangered species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
." Joy argues that developing technologies provide a much greater danger to humanity than any technology before it has ever presented. In particular, he focuses on genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
and robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
. He argues that 20th century technologies of destruction, such as the nuclear bomb, were limited to large governments, due to the complexity and cost of such devices, as well as the difficulty in acquiring the required materials. He also voices concern about increasing computer power. His worry is that computers will eventually become more intelligent than we are, leading to such dystopian scenarios as robot rebellion
Cybernetic revolt
Cybernetic revolt or robot uprising is a scenario in which an artificial intelligence decide that humans are a threat , are inferior, or are oppressors and try to destroy or to enslave them potentially leading to...
. He notably quotes the Unabomber on this topic. After the publication of the article, Bill Joy suggested assessing technologies to gauge their implicit dangers, as well as having scientists refuse to work on technologies that have the potential to cause harm.
In the AAAS
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2001 article titled A Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists, Bill Joy was criticized for having technological tunnel vision on his prediction, by failing to consider social factors. In Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near
The Singularity Is Near
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us in the near future...
, he questioned the regulation of potentially dangerous technology, asking "Should we tell the millions of people afflicted with cancer and other devastating conditions that we are canceling the development of all bioengineered treatments because there is a risk that these same technologies may someday be used for malevolent purposes?".
Prey
Prey is a 2002 novel by Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
which features an artificial swarm of nanorobots which develop intellegence and threaten their human inventors. The novel generated concern within the nanotechnology community that the novel could negatively affect public perception of nanotechnology by creating fear of a similar scenario in real life.
Drexler–Smalley debate
Richard Smalley, best known for co-discovering the soccer ball-shaped “buckyball” molecule and a leading advocate of nanotechnology and its many applications, was an outspoken critic of the idea of molecular assemblerMolecular assembler
A molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition. This is because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and...
s, as advocated by Eric Drexler. In 2001 he introduced scientific objections to them attacking the notion of universal assemblers in a 2001 Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
article, leading to a rebuttal
Counterargument
In reasoning and argument mapping, a counterargument, also known as a rebuttal, is an objection to an objection. A counterargument can be used to rebut an objection to a premise, a main contention or a lemma...
later that year from Drexler and colleagues, and eventually to an exchange of open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
s in 2003.
Smalley criticized Drexler's work on nanotechnology as naive, arguing that chemistry is extremely complicated, reactions are hard to control, and that a universal assembler is science fiction. Smalley believed that such assemblers were not physically possible and introduced scientific objections to them. His two principal technical objections, which he had termed the “fat fingers problem" and the "sticky fingers problem”, argued against the feasibility of molecular assemblers being able to precisely select and place individual atoms. He also believed that Drexler’s speculations about apocalyptic dangers of molecular assemblers threaten the public support for development of nanotechnology.
Smalley first argued that "fat fingers" made MNT impossible. He later argued that nanomachines would have to resemble chemical enzymes more than Drexler's assemblers and could only work in water. He believed these would exclude the possibility of "molecular assemblers" that worked by precision picking and placing of individual atoms. Also, Smalley argued that nearly all of modern chemistry involves reactions that take place in a solvent (usually water), because the small molecules of a solvent contribute many things, such as lowering binding energies for transition states. Since nearly all known chemistry requires a solvent, Smalley felt that Drexler's proposal to use a high vacuum environment was not feasible.
Smalley also believed that Drexler's speculations about apocalyptic dangers of self-replicating machines that have been equated with "molecular assemblers" would threaten the public support for development of nanotechnology. To address the debate between Drexler and Smalley regarding molecular assemblers Chemical & Engineering News
Chemical & Engineering News
Chemical & Engineering News is a weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society, providing professional and technical information in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering...
published a point-counterpoint consisting of an exchange of letters that addressed the issues.
Drexler and coworkers responded to these two issues in a 2001 publication. Drexler and colleagues noted that Drexler never proposed universal assemblers able to make absolutely anything, but instead proposed more limited assemblers able to make a very wide variety of things. They challenged the relevance of Smalley's arguments to the more specific proposals advanced in Nanosystems. Drexler maintained that both were straw man
Straw man
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...
arguments, and in the case of enzymes, Prof. Klibanov wrote in 1994, "...using an enzyme in organic solvents eliminates several obstacles..." Drexler also addresses this in Nanosystems by showing mathematically that well designed catalysts can provide the effects of a solvent and can fundamentally be made even more efficient than a solvent/enzyme reaction could ever be. Drexler had difficulty in getting Smalley to respond, but in December 2003, Chemical and Engineering news carried a 4 part debate.
Ray Kurzweil spends four pages in his book 'The Singularity Is Near' to showing that Richard Smalley's arguments are not valid, and disputing them point by point. Kurzweil ends by stating that Drexler's visions are very practicable and even happening already.
Royal Society report on the implications of nanotechnology
The Royal SocietyRoyal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
and Royal Academy of Engineering
Royal Academy of Engineering
-Overview: is the UK’s national academy of engineering. The Academy brings together the most successful and talented engineers from across the engineering sectors for a shared purpose: to advance and promote excellence in engineering....
's 2004 report on the implications of nanoscience and nanotechnologies was inspired by Prince Charles' concerns about nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
, including molecular manufacturing. However, the report spent almost no time on molecular manufacturing. In fact, the word "Drexler
K. Eric Drexler
Dr. Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology , from the 1970s and 1980s.His 1991 doctoral thesis at MIT was revised and published as...
" appears only once in the body of the report (in passing), and "molecular manufacturing" or "molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials...
" not at all. The report covers various risks of nanoscale technologies, such as nanoparticle toxicology. It also provides a useful overview of several nanoscale fields. (Someone more interested in nanoscale technologies should expand this description.) The report contains an annex (appendix) on grey goo
Grey goo
Grey goo is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario known as ecophagy .Self-replicating machines of the macroscopic variety were originally...
, which cites a weaker variation of Richard Smalley
Richard Smalley
Richard Errett Smalley was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas...
's contested argument against molecular manufacturing. It concludes that there is no evidence that autonomous, self replicating nanomachines will be developed in the foreseeable future, and suggests that regulators should be more concerned with issues of nanoparticle toxicology.
Initial commercial applications
The early 2000s saw the beginnings of the use of nanotechnology in commercial products, although most applications are limited to the bulk use of passive nanomaterialsNanomaterials
Nanomaterials is a field that takes a materials science-based approach to nanotechnology. It studies materials with morphological features on the nanoscale, and especially those that have special properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions...
. Examples include titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. Generally it comes in two different forms, rutile and anatase. It has a wide range of...
and zinc oxide
Zinc oxide
Zinc oxide is an inorganic compound with the formula ZnO. It is a white powder that is insoluble in water. The powder is widely used as an additive into numerous materials and products including plastics, ceramics, glass, cement, rubber , lubricants, paints, ointments, adhesives, sealants,...
nanoparticle
Nanoparticle
In nanotechnology, a particle is defined as a small object that behaves as a whole unit in terms of its transport and properties. Particles are further classified according to size : in terms of diameter, coarse particles cover a range between 10,000 and 2,500 nanometers. Fine particles are sized...
s in sunscreen, cosmetics and some food products; silver nanoparticles
Silver nanoparticles
Silver nanoparticles are nanoparticles of silver, i.e. silver particles of between 1 nm and 100 nm in size. While frequently described as being 'silver' some are composed of a large percentage of silver oxide due to their large ratio of surface-to-bulk silver atoms.-Synthesis:There are...
in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances such as Silver Nano
Silver Nano
Silver Nano is a trademark name of an antibacterial technology which uses silver nanoparticles in washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, air purifiers and vacuum cleaners introduced by Samsung in April 2003....
; carbon nanotube
Carbon nanotube
Carbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure. Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, significantly larger than for any other material...
s for stain-resistant textiles; and cerium oxide as a fuel catalyst. As of March 10, 2011, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies was established in 2005 as a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Project is intended to address the social, political, and public safety aspects of nanotechnology...
estimated that over 1300 manufacturer-identified nanotech products are publicly available, with new ones hitting the market at a pace of 3–4 per week.
The National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
funded researcher David Berube to study the field of nanotechnology. His findings are published in the monograph Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz. This study concludes that much of what is sold as “nanotechnology” is in fact a recasting of straightforward materials science, which is leading to a “nanotech industry built solely on selling nanotubes, nanowires, and the like” which will “end up with a few suppliers selling low margin products in huge volumes." Further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies branded with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. According to Berube, there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of more ambitious and far-sighted work.
See also
- Timeline of carbon nanotubesTimeline of carbon nanotubes-1952:* Radushkevich and Lukyanovich publish a paper in the Soviet Journal of Physical Chemistry showing hollow graphitic carbon fibers that are 50 nanometers in diameter.-1960:...
- History of DNA nanotechnology