By John Carroll
Small Times Correspondent

Aug. 14, 2001 — Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin are engaged in talks to either launch a start-up company or license the use of a breakthrough in nanocrystals that may lay the foundation for a new line of super small tech products.

“Things are moving real quick,” said Brian Korgel, an assistant

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Brian Korgel, left, and Keith Johnston of the University of Texas at Austin are looking into products based on their method of producing silicon-based nanocrystals in bulk.

Korgel and chemical engineering professor Keith Johnston have found a method to make stable microscopic nanocrystals out of silicon that can emit light. And by toying with the size of the silicon nanostructures, they can change the color of the light that shines through.

By creating a light-emitting silicon crystal, the researchers are opening the door to a new, nanosized material that can offer a much cheaper substitute for manufacturers needing light emitting diodes (LEDs) and pushing forward the work of scientists focused on creating nanosized devices that can be used as microscopic sensors or to help power computers.

What we’re trying to do is make some devices using our material,” said Korgel. “There are a lot of companies interested in using these small silicon particles to store an electrical charge for computer memory,” he added. “It can make essentially faster memory and generate less heat and radiate less power.” And while other companies have filed various patents for nanocrystals in the past, the UT Austin researchers’ production methods will make it easier to create the material in bulk at lower cost, they said.

Korgel’s achievement in making nanocrystals out of silicon using a method that will provide bulk quantities “is likely to have technological importance,” said Naomi Halas, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University in Houston. While the UT Austin’s efforts won’t have direct impact on her own work exploring the optical qualities of nanocrystals, “it’s wonderful work. Extremely high quality work.”

Korgel and Johnston are also exploring ways that nanocrystals can be used to create a new generation of computer and television screens with the full rainbow of natural colors and possibly come up with new biomedical techniques.

Current cellular research has relied on dyed molecules for some of their work, Korgel said. But now he wants to learn whether nanocrystals can be used in place of the dyes.

One of the big advantages behind such a medical use, Korgel said, is that silicon is a very stable material. “It doesn’t react very easily.” That would make it inherently safer. “Putting cadmium into people doesn’t sound so great,” he said.

For decades, silicon has been the cheap raw material used in the transistors behind the amazing growth of computer power. But without the ability to emit light, developers had to turn to costly semiconductors when creating LEDs needed for products like lasers or computer and television screens.

Other scientists have made nanocrystals out of silicon over the past decade, but Korgel said they always found that the microscopic material was notoriously unstable, automatically reshaping itself into larger sizes.

Korgel has concentrated his work on breaking down silicon into tiny crystals and then manipulating the size of the crystals so they will emit different colored lights. Researchers heat a mix of an organic solvent called hexane and a hydrocarbon ligand known as octanol to 450 degrees Celsius inside a titanium chamber. Then they add silicon, which is broken down into spherical nanocrystals, also called quantum dots.

By combining the mix of agents, they are able to stop the silicon crystals from banding back together. The critical point in their success came when they found how to manipulate the size of the crystals by increasing and decreasing the concentration of ligands – a process that coats the silicon crystals to control their size.

As they reduce the size of the crystals, Korgel and others are able to create a crystal that emits a blue light. By making it larger, the crystal emits green light. And by making it larger still, the nanocrystals emit a red light.

After the solvent is removed from the mix, they harvest the crystals for use.

“You’re using the same material to create different colors,” Korgel said. “That’s why the nanostructures are so neat.” Currently, anyone trying to emit colors has to use a unique set of materials for each color.

The researchers’ progress with silicon nanocrystals — and its commercial potential — quickly attracted the attention of the venture capital field. Korgel said that he expects to hammer out the shape of a new venture by the end of the year.

RELATED STORY: Nanocrystals show their true colors

By Michael Becker
Small Times Correspondent

July 30, 2001 — As nanotechnology moves from the realm of science fiction to the real world of commercial application, legislation and regulation are going to have to play catch-up.

Legal experts say the lag between technology and

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The respirocyte would be a spherical nanorobot, approximately 1 micron in size. Just a 5cc dose should do the work of all red blood cells in the blood stream. But what laws would govern its use? These bacterium-sized gadgets would likely to force a debate over existing regulations.

Biotechnology has led to a closer examination of patent law and what is patentable. Stem cell research is having a similar impact — witness a recent bill that emerged from the judiciary committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in late July that seeks to outlaw not just the cloning of humans, but also the use of cloning technology to create stem cells to treat diseases.

Nanotechnology will be no different. But the range and scope of laws and regulations could be much broader: everything from international trade law, to treaties banning chemical and biological weapons, to regulations governing medicine and the environment.

A good example of a nanotechnology application that would likely to force a debate over existing regulations is the respirocyte. Theoretically, it would be a spherical nanorobot, approximately 1 micron in size — about as big as a bacterium.

Respirocytes would consist of a tiny, pressurized tank and pumps carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood stream. They would augment or even replace red blood cells — just a 5cc dose should the work of all the red blood cells in the blood stream.

While it may take 10 to 20 years to build and perfect respirocytes, the question is whether it would qualify as a medical device, as a drug or as something completely different.

Robert Freitas, a research scientist at Zyvex Corp. in Richardson, Texas, who also holds a law degree, notes that other potential nanorobots designed to eat bacteria, repair individual cells and deliver precise drug doses to precise locations will force regulators to take a long, hard look at how to test, monitor and approve such technologies.

“With greater potential for danger,” he said, “comes greater need for regulation.”

Much of the existing body of law, however, will probably need only minor tinkering.

“Whenever you see a new technology, there is always a temptation to say, ‘We need all new laws to deal with it,'” noted Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who has written about the legal implications of nanotechnology.

This kind of reaction, he said, usually turns out to be wrong. “Old laws often work out surprisingly well,” he said, adding that when legislators do try to craft new bodies of law to deal with new technologies, “the results are either pointless or disastrous.”

That is not to say that government should take a hands-off approach. T.S. Twibell, an associate with the Kansas City, Mo., law firm Kurlbaum Stoll Seaman Mustoe & McCrummen, who has also written about nanotechnology’s legal implications, says government involvement will help lawmakers and regulators.

“Government needs to have a hand in, to know what people are developing and be able to react to it,” Twibell said.

But the biggest area of concern is likely to be copyright and patent law. While some may question whether a company can patent an atomic structure, most legal experts agree that there are enough precedents involving biotechnology and genetic material to cover nanotechnology. Rather, the problem will more likely be protecting the intellectual property from illegal copies and piracy.

Reynolds offers a hypothetical situation in which “disassemblers” are created that can examine something atom by atom, keeping track of the object’s overall structure and making perfect copies of it.

In such a case, it would be nearly impossible to determine if a copy of something was obtained legally or not. Zyvex’s Freitas, when asked how the law might seek to resolve this, laughed, “that’s a good question. I think as we get closer to it, the answer will emerge.” But, he added, “it won’t be painless, there will be economic adjustments.”

Freitas, Reynolds and Twibell all agree that in this kind of situation, the real value will reside not in the physical object, but in its design. Consumers would download the design of an object and replicate it themselves, rather than go out and buy it.

Patent issues will also emerge with self-replicating nanotechnologies, especially if those technologies are designed to adapt to new surroundings. “If evolution occurred in a, say, patent grain,” he said, “if the patent grain evolves over time, where does the patent stop?”

This has led some researchers to argue that an “open source” approach to nanotechnology is more feasible. Similar to the software design community of the same name, developers and researchers would collaborate on designs without any one person or company holding a patent or copyright on it.

“There are a lot of good reasons for an open source approach,” Reynolds said. “It tends to be more robust, less ‘buggy.'”

And, if it is so easy to copy things, he added, open source may be the only viable commercial approach. Freitas, on the other hand, argues that while open source, “in some selected areas might have some utility” — such as in developing kernels for nanotechnology tools — he doesn’t believe it can provide enough incentive to lead to major new developments in nanotechnology.

Some of the other big legal headaches are likely to emerge when scientists perfect replicating, or self-replicating, nanotechnology.

The U.S. Department of Defense is spending prolifically on such nanotechnology research, which could be used to disrupt enemy communications or disable weapons systems and equipment. The fear is that defense researchers will develop and release a self-replicating nanorobot without knowing how to shut it down, devouring matter to recreate itself in a formless mass of nanoparticles sometimes referred to as “gray goo.”

Existing international regimes designed to prevent the use of chemical and biological weapons may have to be re-examined and rewritten to ban the development or use of such technology.

A more benign application of replicating nanotechnology would allow manufacturers to build things atom by atom, rather than the present method of taking hunks of metal or wood and reducing them to the proper size and form.

Such manufacturing technologies would be extremely clean, with little or no environmental pollution. As a result, as such technology becomes cheaper and more prevalent, “(environmental) laws could actually even tighten up,” Freitas said.

And while such a “ground up” approach to manufacturing should lower production costs, the development costs to get there could be huge, effectively leaving developing countries left with legacy industries that can’t compete. Twibell believes such a prospect means nanotechnology will affect trade law, “definitely at the global level.”

But Reynolds is a bit more sanguine. “It’s something to worry about, I suppose, but it’s not assured,” he said. He argues that development could actually go the other way, and cites India’s emergence as a center for call centers and software development as an example of how technologies created in developed countries can be embraced by developing ones, with positive economic results. “If you can get the technology to them,” he said, “people will do better, not worse.”

Given the pace of development occurring within nanotechnology, it is expected that the law will find itself at odds with these new technologies sooner than some may think. “That’s going to affect all of us in our lifetime, certainly in our professional lifetime,” Freitas said.

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