Nanotech: It’s not a bubble
01/01/2006
After the recent dot-com fiasco, it’s no wonder the industry regards with skepticism any claims about a revolutionary technology with limitless growth potential. Since 2000, the US government has poured more than $4 billion into nanotechnology through more than 30 agencies, with this year’s budget topping $1 billion. It’s estimated that with additional investments from states and industry, the US alone may be spending about a third of this year’s estimated $9 billion global investment in nanotech R&D. About 1000 US companies have sprung up in nanotech, and many large companies (Motorola, IBM, BASF, DuPont, for example) have groups developing potential products. While there is some venture capital involved, the VCs have been far more cautious than in the late-’90s dot-com boom.
Is a new bubble forming, blown up by government funds this time rather than Wall Street and VCs? Note that even though hundreds of dot-coms died in the 2000 era, a few did grow and prosper (Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Google). And the Internet continues to play a growing role not only in business and commerce, but in every sector of our lives. So while there may have been an overhyped investing frenzy, there was substance underneath.
Is nanotech building a strong base for the growth of whole new business sectors? While a few nanoproducts, such as improved coatings or stain-free fabrics, have emerged, most commercial applications appear to be years away. In the electronics arena, novel circuitry and display devices currently seem little more than laboratory curiosities. Nature’s self-assembly techniques at the nanoscale seem promising, but gaining control of uniform size and space is proving to be extremely challenging. Instead, it may be necessary to structure systems that will work in spite of a few imperfections. Systems based on two-terminal devices (tunnel diodes, Josephson junctions) have never become competitive with three-terminal, transistor-based technology, and so far it’s proving difficult to make nanotransistors.
In fact, we are already making CMOS-based circuitry at high yields with features well below 100nm, and scaling to 32nm and even below seems feasible using topdown fabrication methods. So nanotech faces very tough competition against Moore’s Law for the next decade, at least. A recent Semi survey suggests that it is more likely that early applications will be in displays, particularly using carbon nanotubes, and nonvolatile memory.
But comparing nanotech to today’s circuitry is the wrong way to look at it. In the 1-100nm range, physics changes. Quantum effects come into play, and energy levels shift in different-sized nanocrystals. New tools will be needed to probe these effects and manipulate structures at the molecular and atomic levels. Exploration of the nanoworld is just beginning, in biology as well as materials and electronic devices. Already the potential for supersensitive nano-based sensors is being explored for detection of toxic chemical, biological, nuclear, or explosive threats by the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), according to Keith B. Ward of the agency. (Some details are at the web site http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home5.jsp.)
While many new types of niche applications will emerge along the way, we can expect important fundamental discoveries as the science progresses, and some of these could lead to truly new types of devices and system concepts. We can expect many advances in electronics, and already nanotech is having an impact on materials. But the most revolutionary developments may be in biomedicine. Products could be much smaller and more sensitive and could use less power than today’s electronic devices. Metrology and manipulation tools developed for nanoelectronics will be very valuable in exploring the biotech realm, as well as in helping develop devices combining biological and electronic functions, such as drug delivery and lab-on-a-chip. They will also help develop devices for hearing, seeing, touch, and perhaps transmission of nerve signals. MEMS devices will also find many uses in biotech and biomedical applications.
Industry’s vigorous exploration of this frontier, along with government funding of precompetitive R&D, will lay a strong foundation for dramatic developments over the next few years. There is great excitement in the technical community about innovative developments that could flow from this new frontier, but so far, at least, nanotech stocks are not soaring on Wall Street. Nanotechnology definitely does not have the characteristics of a bubble. It looks like it could very well be the next big thing, but we may have to wait awhile.
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Robert Haavind
Editorial Director