Category Archives: LEDs

October 11, 2005 – A protein called kinesin has a “walking” mechanism that is very energy efficient and could be used to develop future molecular-sized machines without worries about problems caused by heat, Japanese researchers said Monday, reports the Jiji Press.

Kinesin has been known as a nanometer-scale biological motor that transports various substances between cells and helps cell division. It produces eight-nanometer steps along microtubules and usually moves forward, though sometimes going backward.

Using a technique called “optical tweezers,” the researchers, led by Osaka University Prof. Toshio Yanagida, discovered the mechanism of how kinesin sets its direction and walks one foot after another like humans.

Kinesin has sensors on its “feet” that determine which way the protein should go by interpreting thermodynamic information known as entropy, according to their report published online by Nature Chemical Biology yesterday.

The protein only consumes a very tiny amount of energy when it sets the direction, and requires no energy for a walk because it takes advantage of a phenomenon called Brown motion, in which surrounding water molecules that are moving randomly due to heat, hit kinesin’s “legs” to eventually help them take steps forward.

“When you try to make highly integrated tiny devices like computer chips, you will find heat is a big problem,” Yanagida said. “But further studying kinesin’s walking mechanism, which does not produce heat but use it, could lead to a major breakthrough.”

Click here to enlarge image

Oct. 11, 2005 – I’m sure I wasn’t the only person attending a recent conference in California who saw the irony in Eric Drexler giving the plenary talk in place of the International Society of Optical Engineering’s 2005 Visionary Award winner, Richard Smalley. Unfortunately, Smalley faced travel restrictions because of a cancer treatment he was undergoing. Needing to find a replacement quickly, conference organizers selected Drexler to lead off their nano session.

As most people in the industry are aware, there is a relatively long-standing debate between Drexler and Smalley regarding the vision of molecular manufacturing. Drexler, the founder of the Foresight Institute (now known as the Foresight Nanotech Institute), has based his career on the future of atom-by-atom and molecule-by-molecule assembly. Smalley argues that Drexler’s vision is not technically feasible.

Thus the irony in the speaker substitution. After getting past my initial surprise, though, I realized that Drexler’s selection wasn’t as inappropriate as it appeared, even if done by accident.

Smalley and Drexler are both visionaries and have contributed significantly to the field of nanotechnology. Smalley’s concept of nanotechnology parallels the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s focus on physical properties that occur in materials below 100 nanometers. Drexler believes that this definition is too broad because it covers making nanoscale products and not just nanoscale systems. As an astute colleague noted, this is probably more a fight over research dollars than staying true to Richard Feynman’s ideas.

Smalley won a Nobel Prize for his part in discovering buckminsterfullerenes. Deciding that nanotubes had more application promise than buckyballs, Smalley has been actively driving research in “buckytubes” at Rice University. He is also an entrepreneur, starting Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc., a Texas-based supplier of — what else — carbon nanotubes.

Drexler is most famous for writing “Engines of Creation” (1986), which is widely considered as the “first” book on nanotechnology. With roots in space research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Drexler was also the first, though I’m not sure how many more there have been, to earn a doctorate in molecular nanotechnology. Understanding the potential upside and downside to the technology, Drexler has both purposefully driven research forward and raised cautionary flags.

Both men share a desire to make a positive impact on the world. Foresight has a mission to promote nanotechnologies that may help solve some of the major global challenges such as energy, clean water and human quality of life.

Smalley has taken a more focused approach and actively promotes nanotechnology research for energy solutions. And not just incremental improvements are on his radar: He wants to see a replacement for fossil fuels, preferably driven by nanotechnology.

Lastly, science is about debate. If we believed what other people said, we would still think the world was flat and that the universe revolved around me — oops, I meant the Earth. At the SPIE conference, I gave a talk on nanotechnology applications in the market today. I asked the mostly technical audience if they believed molecular manufacturing would be a reality in the next 20 to 30 years. About half said yes, and half said no. Fortunately, the debate on molecular manufacturing isn’t likely to end any time soon.

Why fortunately? Because this is the kind of debate that gets the blood boiling, the mind spinning and the younger generation inspired. In a world of ever-increasing population, pollution and limited resources, we need dreams to drive research and development. Nanotechnology has captured the imagination of the general public and we would be foolish not to take advantage of the momentum currently behind it.

A similar kind of dream — space travel — took us to the moon and gave us Tang. Revolutionary visions can bring about evolutionary change. In reality, space travel hasn’t been fully realized yet. We are still just orbiting the Earth, and even that is in jeopardy. (The shuttle landed safely the morning I began this column — big sigh of relief.) However, even with the promise not yet achieved, the space program has led to significant commercial advances in many industries like aerospace, automotive, consumer and defense.

I see the same with the pursuit of molecular manufacturing. Who knows if we will ever see a computer being generated from bottom-up assembly? (Side note: The new nanofactory animation film released by Nanorex needs some work if it is really going to inspire.) In the end, does it really matter? The goal is to encourage great minds to achieve great things along the long nano road ahead.

Oct. 6, 2005 — Invitrogen Corp. (Nasdaq: IVGN) announced it has made a pair of acquisitions. The Carlsbad, Calif., provider of life science technologies for disease research, drug discovery, and commercial bioproduction announced it has acquired Quantum Dot Corp. as well as the BioPixels business unit of BioCrystal Ltd. Terms were not disclosed.

The two acquisitions will help support Invitrogen’s molecular probes business, according to a news release issued by Invitrogen. In addition, Invitrogen announced that it had secured an exclusive license for a novel nanocluster technology from Georgia Tech Research Corp. Invitrogen says that the combination of the acquisition and the license will help it create new products for the visualization and understanding of cellular processes, molecular interactions, and other factors essential for diagnosing and treating disease.

Quantum Dot, of Hayward, Calif., launched its first product based on nanobiotechnology, the Qdot 605 Streptavidin Conjugate, in 2002 and has broadened its product line significantly in the ensuing years. Qdots are semiconductor nanocrystals used in life science and other research. BioPixels, of Westerville, Ohio, provides novel coatings and metal alloys for semiconductor nanocrystals for use in automating assays of complex biological samples. Invitrogen will seek to combine both companies’ technologies to make smaller, brighter and less toxic particles.

In a separate move, Invitrogen also announced it has closed on its previously-announced acquisition of Biosource International Inc. The company says the deal supports its growing collection of protein and primary antibody products gained from other acquisitions completed earlier this year.

Oct. 5, 2005 — Tegal Corp. (Nasdaq:TGAL) announced it had shipped an Endeavor AT PVD cluster tool to be used by a leading analog and mixed signal device supplier. The devices are used in a wide variety of wireless, networking and cell phone applications. The tool, valued at $1.2 million, is being shipped to a foundry in China that will produce the devices for the U.S.-based company. Tegal says it is the first Endeavor system to be used for device production in China.

The Endeavor AT PVD tool deposits films with low to zero stress values in an extremely clean process environment. They are used in manufacturing advanced power devices, photo masks, light emitting diodes, and electro-acoustic devices made using MEMS processes.

Sep. 28, 2005 – Acacia Research Corp. announced its CombiMatrix Group (Nasdaq:CBMX) has received a one year $338,000 contract from the U.S. Air Force for the development and production of microarrays to detect pathogens that cause upper respiratory infections and pathogens that infect wounds.

The contract is the result of a collaborative effort with the Air Force Institute of Occupational Health that led to the development of a rapid assay and microarray that identifies all forms of influenza A, including bird flu.

Click here to enlarge image

Sep. 26, 2005 – Nanotech is almost always about doing things differently. Recently, one of the earliest organizations devoted to nanotechnology went through some changes, too. The Foresight Nanotech Institute, a public interest think tank with a 20-year history at the forefront of nanotechnology theory, wants to become involved in its more immediate uses as well. Scott Mize was brought on as president a year ago to help execute that transition. He talked with Small Times’ David Forman about the institute’s history, its new charter and the road ahead — both near term and long term — for nanotechnology.

Q: The Foresight Nanotech Institute has gone through significant changes in the last year that coincided with your joining the organization, so let’s start there. Why did you take this position?

Well, it was a significant challenge. Foresight had played a very significant role in the beginnings of nanotechnology, including basically coming up with the initial concept and being the initial folks that educated the public. And a lot of people don’t know this, but 2006 is the 20th year of Foresight. So it’s had a very successful 20-year history of educating the world about nanotechnology but really needed to go into a new phase.

Foresight needed to say, what’s our place in the ecology going forward? And what role can a public interest think tank play in driving the future of nanotechnology in its current state? Just the challenge of taking an organization with that legacy and building it to its next phase was pretty intriguing, and leveraged on a lot of skills that I have and resources that I have that I could bring to the table.

Q: What are you now trying to accomplish? In broad strokes, what do you want this organization to be?

I think if you characterize the focus of Foresight for the first 19 years, it was long-term technology — (exploring) the implications of the potential of this long-term technology. And we decided to add a near-term and mid-term focus to that.

Our organizing principle is what we call the Foresight Nanotech Challenges. It involves six challenges that we think are the largest challenges which humanity faces that can be addressed by nanotechnology — sort of where society can get the biggest bang for the buck in terms of R&D investment. What we want to do is begin to educate people about these and to encourage activity like government funding and corporate funding.

We said, for instance, the number one challenge is meeting global energy needs with clean solutions. That’s something where you can say, “OK, what does that translate into in terms of specific applications?”

Well, it’s fuel cells. It’s solar cells. It’s hydrogen storage. It’s more efficient appliances and other devices that consume energy. It might even go as far as this whole reinventing of the power grid that’s being talked about by a lot of different people. All of those things are application areas that address the challenges. So it’s a near-term to mid-term application focus centered around the Foresight Nanotech Challenges.

Q: Why stick to nanotech? That has a flavor of technology push to it.

It does, but the reason to stick with just nanotechnology is that’s our charter. Our universe is bounded by the word nanotechnology. We made that conscious decision. That’s another thing that’s significant is that one of the things we decided when I came into Foresight is what we weren’t doing — and what we’re not doing is anything that isn’t related to nanotechnology.

Q: Just by definition?

Because we needed to focus the organization.

Q: What if the solution to some of these challenges lies somewhere else?

Solving these challenges by any means would be a fabulous thing. But our assessment is nanotech has an important part to play here. And as a nanotech-oriented organization that’s the lens through which we will look at things.

Q: Tell me about the other initiatives you mentioned.

The other thing that I think is a significant cornerstone of our new direction is the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems. This is our effort to connect the dots between the near term and longer term. Our success model for this is the ITRS, the semiconductor roadmap.

The idea here is that we want to bring a similar roadmap into existence for the nanotech realm and focus on this narrow area of productive nanosystems. We certainly can’t exactly duplicate what the ITRS did because they had a very constrained problem, which is, let’s make some processors and memories using CMOS technology and lithography and the goal is to double every certain amount of time. They had a fairly specific technology focus whereas what we would be doing in our roadmap is a lot broader technologically.

Q: Will you make any efforts to integrate this with other roadmaps? For example, the chemical industry has a roadmap.

We’ve got two major bodies in this — actually three — that are working with us on the roadmap. One is the steering committee. That is a high-level oversight group that reviews what’s going on and sets the direction. And then we’ve got a working group. These are people we’re going to bring together and organize to actually create the bulk of the content for the roadmap.

Our plan is to bring folks who have experience with other roadmaps onto that working group. And then the third group is what we call the roadmap partners. These are industry organizations and professional societies that we think would have a significant amount to contribute to the roadmap and also reach a certain constituency.

Q: Along with all these changes there seems to be a shift from the Foresight language of molecular nanotechnology to now what’s being called productive nanosystems. I’m not clear on what that is.

To a certain extent that’s being defined by the groups being pulled together. Here’s the way I think about it, and that is that you’re going to go through several stages as you develop nanotechnology.

Right now we’re pretty much at the passive nanomaterials stage. The next stage is going to be the active nanomaterials stage, or functional nanomaterials, things that actually do things at the nanoscale. This can be drug delivery. It can be a number of different things. But active materials. Another word that’s been used for that is smart materials.

The next generation I see as devices. Or you might want to think of those as components. And that’s at yet another level of complexity in the technology and hopefully another leap in capability. Fourth is systems, which is taking components and hooking them together into useful systems that can do all sorts of things, that might be able to make other things that are nanostructured, and that can actually go out and do things and make things out there in the world.

Q: Is the essence of what Foresight has been discussing under the rubric of “molecular nanotechnology” kind of a subset of what productive nanosystems might be?

One of the reasons why we’ve come up with the new nomenclature is we want to wipe the slate clean, in terms of people’s legacy connotations around this. What we wanted to do was say, “OK, this has created some confusion. We want to now clarify.”

And so I would definitely say that the levels of complexity and the concepts that were out there in terms of what can “molecular nanotechnology” do, that I would imagine that there would be some of those same capabilities in these eventual productive nanosystems. But I wouldn’t want to say one is the subset of the other. I just want to say that there are some ideas that are related.

But one of the things that we’re doing — and this is important in terms of the change in Foresight — in the early days, Foresight was very much driven by the ideas of one person and really, at some level, set up to promulgate the ideas of one person or a small group of people. What we’ve decided is that we’re a much bigger tent. And that Eric Drexler and all the people who were in that first wave of people who came up with these ideas are honored and welcome as founding members of the tent, but there are a lot of other people in the tent who have different points of view about how this all might go.

Q: We have the challenges. We have the roadmap. Should we be expecting announcements of other big projects or are we now going to start seeing execution?

We are going to be executing. The third area of execution is that we’re going to get very consistent as a publisher of information. We’re going to be publishing a weekly news digest, a bimonthly newsletter. We’re going to be doing Web casts, opportunities to learn, action alerts and other things.

So that’s a third piece of execution. And then the other thing that I always put out there that dovetails with the roadmap effort is that we are in the process of reformulating our prize portfolio. We brought onboard Peter Diamandis and the X-Prize Foundation. (Diamandis heads up the foundation, whose $10 million prize led to breakthroughs in space travel.) We’re beginning a process with them that will be very tightly linked with the roadmap process.

Many people don’t know that we have a quarter-of-a-million-dollar incentive prize that was the first incentive prize in the nanotech field. It turns out that that prize has not been successful for various reasons. It’s called the Feynman Grand Prize and it’s for the first people to manufacture certain devices at the nanoscale.

Q: What was wrong with yours and right with the X-Prize?

One of the things that’s an issue, I’ll just point to one of them, was the current incentive prize is too far off. One of the challenges — the sort of critical success factors of prizes — is to formulate something that’s just the right amount of distance out in the future so that it’s attainable in some reasonable amount of time.

The Mize File

Scott Mize joined the Foresight Nanotech Institute as president in August 2004. Prior to joining Foresight, he co-founded AngstroVision Inc., a company focused on making a next-generation metrology tool for nanotech. He also conceived of and was the chairman of the advisory board of the Nanotechnology Opportunity Report, a global report on the near-term commercial opportunities that exist in nanotechnology (published by CMP Cientifica.)

He worked as a consultant to Technanogy, a nanomaterials company that merged with Nanotechnologies Inc. and as an adviser to software maker Accelrys and other firms. Trained as a software engineer, Mize previously worked as Apple Computer’s multimedia content evangelist and as a product manager at Lotus Development Corp. (now an IBM subsidiary). He co-founded and served as chief executive of Zelos!, an early publisher of personal learning products on CD-ROM, which was acquired by Charter Communications.

L.L. Moro, N.M. Rutherford, X. Chu, R.J. Visser, Vitex Systems, San Jose, California

All electronic and optoelectronic devices require protection from the influences of the environment. A thin-film, transparent, and flexible moisture and gas barrier called Barix can be applied at low temperatures (e.g., <80°C). Although this type of barrier layer can be used in many applications, its attributes make it a key enabling technology for creating plastic flexible substrates and for thin-film encapsulation of new generations of organic-based electronics such as organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, organic solar cells, photovoltaics, and large-area OLED-based lighting.

The OLED application is especially challenging since it requires a coating with very low water vapor permeability (WVTR) of <5x10-6g/m2/day. Currently, displays are being protected by glueing a glass lid — with a cavity filled with desiccant — on the backside of the display, which effectively protects the display against degradation from the environment, but doubles its thickness. The purpose of the thin-film barrier coating is to reduce the thickness and cost of the displays.

Read the complete article in a pdf format.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact:
Julie MacShane, Managing Editor, SST at email: [email protected].

September 22, 2005 – An international research team led by Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue LED, has developed gallium nitride thin films with a new type of crystal structure that opens the door to brighter light sources, said the Nikkei English News. Nakamura, who is based at the U. of California at Santa Barbara, held a news conference in Tokyo to reveal the development.

Because of patent issues, Nakamura could not provide details about the method used to create GaN thin films with the new crystal structure. But he explained that the process makes crystals with nonpolar and semi-polar properties that boost the efficiency with which the material generates light. Normally, GaN crystals are polarized.

Nakamura said that the new crystal structure promises light sources that are more efficient and consume less power. The development promises to speed the adoption of LEDs as replacements for fluorescent lighting and for car headlamps.

In addition, the new GaN crystals are reportedly easy to process into lasers emitting blue, green, red, and other colors of light in the visible part of the spectrum. Such lasers would consume less than one-tenth the power and generate only one-100th the heat of existing devices.

Click here to enlarge image

Sep. 21, 2005 – Two large nanotech-related private financings were announced on Tuesday. Molecular Imprints, a maker of nanoimprint lithography tools, announced it had raised $17 million in the first closing of what it plans to be a $25 million Series C round. Kereos, a developer of cancer therapy and imaging products using targeted nanoparticles, announced it had raised a $19.5 million Series B financing.

Harris & Harris Group (Nasdaq:TINY), a publicly-traded venture capital firm that specializes in nanotechnology, MEMS and microsystems companies, participated in both the Molecular Imprints and Kereos rounds.

Other participants in the Molecular Imprints round included Dai Nippon Printing Company, Alloy Ventures, Motorola Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Hakuto Co. Ltd., Asset Management Partners and other unnamed investors.

Molecular Imprints, based in Austin, Texas, builds nanoimprint tools for the semiconductor and electronics industries and has sold to chip and device makers in markets including semiconductor components, photonics, advanced packaging, data storage and MEMS/NEMS fabrication.

It previously raised a $30 million Series B round, half of which closed in December 2003 and half in April 2004. Initial funding was a $12 million Series A raised in two closings announced in 2002.

As for Kereos, new investors Prolog Ventures, Triathlon Medical Ventures and Charter Life Sciences led the round along with existing investor RiverVest Venture Partners. Existing investor Barnes-Jewish Hospital also participated. Additional new investors included Alafi Capital, Apjohn Ventures, Harris & Harris, Lux Capital, MB Venture Partners, Sigvion Capital and Vectis Life Science, as well as corporate investors Genentech and Royal Philips Electronics. The company raised an initial round of funding for an undisclosed amount in 2001.

Kereos, based in St. Louis, says the first two of its products are expected to enter clinical trials for solid tumors in 2006. It is working with Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging and Philips Medical Systems to develop its products for use in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other types of imaging systems.

– David Forman

September 15, 2005 – Cree Inc. has been awarded a $15 million contract by the Department of Defense’s Title III Program, which is administered by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Under the new five-year contract, Cree will focus on advancing silicon carbide (SiC) microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) processing techniques to transition the production of SiC MMICs to 100mm substrates and reduce cost/chip.

These MMICs can significantly enhance the information gathering capabilities of next-generation military radar systems. Cree is contributing an additional $4.7 million to the program for total project funding of $19.7 million.

“By increasing yields and moving to larger wafer formats, Cree is leading the effort to significantly reduce production costs of SiC MMICs for military applications as well as discrete SiC MESFETs for commercial applications such as WiMax,” notes John W. Palmour, Cree’s executive VP of Advanced Devices. “Cree’s previous work on a 3-inch SiC MMIC program for the Office of Naval Research, announced in 2002, resulted in the launch of the world’s first SiC MMIC foundry service, which is now being used by multiple defense contractors for the realization of wide bandwidth high power amplifiers.”

The new contract will build upon Cree’s recently demonstrated success working on 100mm high-purity semi-insulating SiC substrates for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Technology Initiative.