Oregon’s nanotech researchers are thinking commercialization

Click here to enlarge image

Feb. 18, 2004 — When Congress passed the $3.7 billion 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act last year, hopes blossomed among Oregon’s academics. Among the bill’s sponsors was their own senator, Democrat Ron Wyden.

Click here to enlarge image

When the money begins to flow in 2005, Oregon will be ready.

Researchers at University of Oregon (UO), Oregon State University (OSU) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., are already working on a number of nanotech and microtech projects funded by several federal agencies.

The state legislature has awarded $21 million for a new signature research center, the Multiscale Materials and Devices Institute (MMDI), to smooth the transition from basic to applied research, to engineering and manufacturing.

PNNL and OSU staff are moving from basic research to product tests in microtechnology-based energy, chemical and biological systems. The UO contribution will be in nanomaterials and nanosurfaces.

Hewlett-Packard Co. offered MMDI a three-year lease worth $20 million on 20,000 square feet of former warehouse space on its Corvallis campus. Intel Corp. and other companies have donated sophisticated, equipment to UO researchers.

They believe this web of relationships can turn individual work on miniature heat pumps, thermoelectric coupling devices and nanoparticles into usable products.

Oregonians also hope this demonstrated commitment to commercialization can snag federal funds for one of the planned nano labs envisioned in the nanotech act. What they all want to see is more high-tech startup companies.

“It’s the biggest thing that’s happening in Oregon,” said Alan Meyer, professor of entrepreneurial management at UO, who studies entrepreneurship and is examining nanotech commercialization.

The idea is to form a hot spot for nanotech business developments, he said. “They want to put nanolevel devices on a microtech platform. It is unusual to find this combination of skill sets in one place.”

The skill sets include the work of chemistry professors Dave Johnson and Jim Hutchison at UO and mechanical engineering professor Kevin Drost’s team at OSU and PNNL.

Johnson has developed a way to layer elements atom by atom. “We’re trying to build up a knowledge base about reactions of [various] materials on this scale,” he said.

“The most commercially relevant parts are an ability to control reactions on interfaces currently being used by the semiconductor industry. As far as a true nanoproduct, we are developing thermoelectric materials and have UO patents on this.”

They can use thermoelectric nanomaterials where small size or lack of moving parts is important — for example, pumps that turning heat into electricity to power satellites, or for portable coolers and heaters.

Hutchison directs the Materials Science Institute at UO and works closely with Johnson. He has developed biomolecular, nanolithography processes using DNA as a template for nanoparticles.

Key functional properties for gold particles can operate in nanotransistors, switching and amplifying currents. Devices like this have already been made, but his work has resulted in smaller products that operate at room temperature, he said.

He compares the ability of particles to self-assemble at room temperature to today’s manufacturing processes as the difference between working with LEGO blocks or working in stone.

“You can make standard manufacturing green,” he said, “but microelectronics can result in more environmentally sound practices. New manufacturing technology won’t be needed for about 10 years anyway. By then, it can be greener as well as economically competitive.”

Farthest along in the development process is the Drost team’s miniature heat pump, a portable cooling system. Drost is now working on components, especially tiny batteries or power generators. A solution to a key missing link incorporates fractal patterns in channels to cool fluids. There are two patents on this system.

Another piece aiding nano research center activities is UO’s Center for Advanced Materials Characterization in Oregon, or CAMCOR. There, Professor JoAn Hudson and her colleagues perform a crucial function in the nanoworld: making images of microstructures.

Drost and Johnson are the academic co-directors at MMDI. Skip Rung, retired HP manager and project consultant who wrote the business plan proposal about a year ago, heads the institute.

“This is badly needed experimental space, plus a technical assistance site,” Rung said. “Though it is somewhat like a business incubator, it has no business services or business addresses for companies that may be using it.”

Inside will be laser cutting machines, laser patterning equipment, lithography equipment, diffusion bonding capabilities, test loops for products and subsystems, and powder metallurgy.

Some of Meyer’s business students focus their entrepreneurship research around nanotech. “There’s a huge gap between discoveries and patents and commercialization,” he said. “The plan is to find some more money and hook it up to the signature research center after the scientists get together and invent something, instead of waiting for somebody to call.”

POST A COMMENT

Easily post a comment below using your Linkedin, Twitter, Google or Facebook account. Comments won't automatically be posted to your social media accounts unless you select to share.