Tag Archives: Small Times Magazine

By John Carroll

When research scientist Bruce E. Torbett is isolating stem cells from blood in his laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute’s Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine, he relies on a hefty device that costs about $30,000. An antibody is used to identify the cells and attach them to magnetic beads, which then pass by a magnetic column that demagnetizes them and allows the cells to be harvested.

It’s a time-consuming and expensive process, taking hours of lab time. It’s also an absolute necessity for anyone studying the therapeutic qualities of stem cells.

For companies developing stem cell therapies for widespread use against disease, though, that kind of painstaking procedure looms like a technological roadblock. To remove the barrier, Durham, N.C.-based Aldagen has hooked up with specialty MEMS manufacturer Innovative Micro Technology to begin beta testing a new machine – the Aldesorter – that’s designed to make the technology cheaper, faster and a lot easier to use.

“Current technology was built really for the research market,” said Ed Field, the president and COO of Aldagen, which is researching the use of adult stem cells for the purpose of repairing human tissue, a field that includes rebuilding blood vessels in cardiac patients.

With several stem cell therapies in the pipeline, Field can easily look beyond the research stage to a period when these treatments will become available to large populations of patients. At that point, he says, slow speeds and large machines simply won’t cut it anymore.

“What we were looking for was a very simple desk-top solution where we could provide much faster isolation of these stem cells populations and also have a sterile sorting path so you can throw it away and put in a new disposable for the next patient,” said Field.


Within the Aldesorter, shown here, microfluidic devices isolate the stem cells needed for a treatment. Image courtesy Innovative Micro Technology
Click here to enlarge image

The collaboration marries IMT’s expertise with microfluidics with Aldagen’s chemical reagents that are required to mark and isolate pure stem cell populations from cord blood and bone marrow. Together, they plan to turn out a new version of IMT’s cell sorter specifically to isolate adult stem cells for treatments aimed at a range of diseases that includes chronic heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, leukemias and genetic enzyme deficiencies.

“It is,” said IMT CEO John Foster, “a race car tuned for Aldagen’s application.”

IMT has been working with stem cell isolation technology for the past four years, says Foster, when it was originally funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

In the Aldesorter, IMT’s chips work with an external laser that excites a fluorescent light from cells tagged by a universal stem cell marker, along with a high-speed actuator valve and microfluidics to isolate the stem cells needed for a treatment. And it’s being developed so that the chips can be replaced for every new patient, providing a sterile process for each new patient.

If they’re successful, they can help change the way the stem cell isolation works.

“The Aldagen group and IMT are proposing a different way” to isolate stem cells, said Torbett, “using a proprietary dye that stains the same stem cell population, but with no beads and no antibodies, going through a microfluidic chip at a fast rate which is much quicker to isolate the cells.

“Conventional sorting would be slower than the chip type of technology,” he added. “MEMS is quite rapid. The argument is for another modality and a more rapid method for isolation. What had taken five hours to separate might now take an hour.”


The IMT cell sorter chip showing input, sort/keep, and waste tubing. All microfluidics are contained within the chip for sterility and disposability. Image courtesy Innovative Micro Technology
Click here to enlarge image

That would be an exciting advance that would not only help provide the therapy to patients, says Torbett, but also speed research in the field as well. It’s not a technological revolution, he adds, and it’s likely to take several years to fully prove itself. But it is an important incremental step, and one that a number of technology companies in the field are also exploring.

“I think that these kinds of devices would be useful, cheaper than current devices,” Torbett said. “There are things that have to be worked out, but it would be an enabling technology.”

For Aldagen, the work is critical to developing stem cell therapies, where stem cells are collected from a patient and then reinfused, readily available to treat diseases.

“We’re looking at heart failure ischemia, where there are hundreds of thousands of patients,” said Field. “The current machine could do one person a day. The Aldesorter can handle five to six patients a day per machine.”

“You can sort stem cells today and use the reagents that Aldagen is using to come up and get a great supply of stem cells,” said Foster. “The problem is the speed and sterility of the path which we are solving to make it a clinical tool.”

Drawing stem cells from bone marrow, for example, requires the ability to isolate one percent of all the cells in the bone marrow, says Foster. “That’s not a needle in the haystack, but it isn’t easy.”

Having a fast method to sort a patient’s stem cells on the spot will be particularly critical in an acute therapy.


Stem cells, above, flow through an IMT cell sorter microfluidic channel. Image courtesy Innovative Micro Technology
Click here to enlarge image

“You may want to take the Aldesorter, draw marrow, isolate the stem cells and put them right back into the heart,” said Field. “It makes it easier to get into these chronic populations and in acute settings for trauma or heart attack and stroke. Because the Aldesorter is quick, we can begin to explore the use of stem cells in those markets.”

The final business model hasn’t been crafted yet, says Field, but it may be that the best way to commercialize technology like the Aldesorter will be to give the machine away and sell the disposable chips to users. And Foster isn’t ruling out broader applications as the stem cell field develops.

“Aldagen is our partner for the clinical use of these stem cells,” said Foster. “There may be other applications for cell sorting.”

Aldegan was recently preparing to unveil Phase I data on the Aldesorter. From there, says Field, they can go to the FDA and start a countdown on a follow-up study that can be used to seek FDA approval in 2008. And Field is confidently predicting that Aldagen will be in the forefront of the developers working in the adult stem cell field.

“We believe that the first commercialization of stem cells will be in the adult setting,” said Field. “Embryonic stem cells will take a long time to develop, with some tough ethical and political issues. In the adult space, there’s a faster path to commercialization.”

Legal experts say decision more about EPA policy revamp than nanotechnology

By Richard Acello

The headline in the Washington Post read: “EPA to Regulate Form of Nanotechnology.” But the Environmental Protection Agency’s action may have more to do with whether a washing machine can be considered a pesticide.

On Nov. 21, the EPA said it had determined that the Samsung silver ion generating washing machine, which releases nano silver ions into wash water, is subject to registration requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodentcide Act, or FIFRA.

This was a reversal of an earlier determination that said that the Samsung washer was a device, rather than a pesticide, and therefore not subject to regulation. Under the registration requirement, manufacturers must provide evidence that the use of nanosilver won’t cause harm to public health.

The agency now says that if a product “incorporates a substance intended to prevent, destroy or mitigate pests,” it is considered a pesticide and is required to be registered.

However, the EPA also said it had not come to any conclusions about whether a washing machine that releases silver ions or any other product is using “nanomaterials.” Nano silver is used as a germicide in food-storage containers, air fresheners, and shoe liners, among other products.


Samsung’s washing machine that uses silver ions to clean clothes must be registered with EPA because it acts like a pesticide, the agency said. Image courtesy of Samsung
Click here to enlarge image

“I think this is about the delineation between a device – a washing machine – and a pesticide, or a washing machine that disperses an anti-microbial into the wash and into the waste treatment system, and not necessarily nano silver,” said Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance. “The washing machine application is very different than the use in food containers or wound care, which is regulated by Food and Drug Administration. As such, I suspect the new ruling will primarily affect dispersive uses of nano silver, which are not nearly as common.”

Dick Stoll, a lawyer at Foley & Lardner in Washington who specializes in EPA issues, said the next day press coverage was “pretty misleading.”

“They made it sound as if some earthshaking event has occurred and it hasn’t,” Stoll said.

Stoll says the agency has already been involved in regulation of nanotechnology under the Clean Air Act, and FIFRA. The larger issue, which has already been joined in salvos between industry and environmental groups, is whether EPA should move to consider any nanotechnology product a “new substance” under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA or “Tosca”).

“If EPA said yes to that, it would be a very big deal,” Stoll said.

The effect of a move to regulate nanotech products under TSCA could result in a delay of months or years, Stoll says, in bringing a product to market.

Lynn Bergeson, an attorney with Bergeson & Campbell in Washington, and chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources, said the washing machine decision is “far more about EPA revisiting its device policy than being driven by a determination to regulate things made at the nanoscale level.”

The EPA recently formed a nanotechnology task force working within its Office of Pesticide Programs, and Bergeson said the agency “has been clear that it’s at the very early stages of review.”

Bergeson says the agency has more authority to regulate under FIFRA than under TSCA. “EPA has enormous authority under pesticides versus TCSA,” she explained. “Under TSCA, once a substance is on the approved inventory list, any use is legitimate, but FIFRA is use-specific. The EPA always has the authority to assess the risk of pesticides, regardless of the use.”

Environmentalists seized on the EPA’s washing machine decision to urge the agency to regulate a wider group of products containing nano silver.

In a Nov. 22 letter to the director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, environmental action organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said “….there are currently more than 40 consumer products in the marketplace that contain nano silver, some of which either expressly make pesticidal claims or imply pesticidal effectiveness and none of which are currently registered with EPA.” The NRDC says the agency is “obligated to examine these products and require registration for any product that uses nano silver as a biocide.”

The NRDC said Sharper Image has removed statements of pesticidal claims from its products treated with nano silver, including slippers, socks and food containers, an action that “denies the public’s right to know the active ingredient of these products.”

Albany Nanotech put another notch in its belt when it qualified its 65nm semiconductor fabrication line in September. It is the first university to qualify a line of tools that matches the current state-of-the-art in the semiconductor industry.

The line is operated under the auspices of the Center for Semiconductor Research (CSR), an industrial partnership that includes participation from IBM, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Sony, Toshiba, Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials. The CSR is a long-term program to develop future chip technology beginning with the 32nm node. It is intended to provide full vertical integration of the design, modeling, fabrication, testing and pilot prototyping of devices.

“The line came up really well,” said James Ryan, professor of nanoscience and vice president of technology at Albany Nanotech. “It worked pretty much on the first shot.”

Ryan and others involved in the effort say the new line is a necessity in order for Albany Nanotech to take advantage of resources like an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) alpha demo tool it took delivery of from ASML this past summer. Moreover, they say, having a full product line is critical for both developing the new processes required and for providing feedback to the tool vendors.


From left, IBM Director of 300mm Operations William Rozich, Albany Nanotech Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Alain Kaloyeros, and Albany Nanotech Vice President of Technology James Ryan display some of the wafers that came off Albany Nanotech’s new 65nm production line. Photo courtesy of Albany Nanotech
Click here to enlarge image

“We intend to totally practice the craft of device integration,” said William Rozich, IBM’s director of 300mm operations. “Toolmaker participation becomes critical.” In short, having a full line lets tool innovation become part of the design process itself.

Ryan and Rozich said the effort was a case study in making industrial teams work. “People disagree, sure,” said Ryan, “but the guy who gets listened to in the meeting is the guy in the room who is smartest on that topic.”

Rozich said the effort constituted a unique blend of cultures that was a first for IBM in another way. “It was the first time for us doing this type of thing where we are not running the show,” he said.

Nevertheless, hiccups did occur. Working “pretty much on the first shot” actually meant the second: The first, said Ryan, was a mis-process.

And the teams encountered challenges they didn’t anticipate – such as how to collaborate in an open environment while still protecting corporate assets. That may sound easy, but it’s not necessarily so when you have to balance fab viewing corridors and camera phones, or open academic networks and corporate VPNs. New protocols had to be developed.

And procurement provided an almost comic stumbling block. “Let’s just say they weren’t used to ordering the quantities (of chemicals) that we need,” said Ryan of procurement staff who were more accustomed to ordering for classroom experiments than they were for a semiconductor fab.

Going forward, the group says the line will be both integrated and modular, supporting both industrial 32nm process development as well as academic projects like one Ryan is pursuing under a Navy contract to develop a new resistor material.

“It’s a unique model,” said Alain Kaloyeros, Albany Nanotech vice president and chief administrative officer, citing the close industry-academic collaboration. “It’s important to have partners willing to take short term risk in order to be strategic.”
– David Forman

IBM unveils MEMS-based chip cooling approach

IBM researchers presented an innovative MEMS-based approach for improving the cooling of computer chips at the Power and Cooling Summit in October. Big Blue says the technique, called “high thermal conductivity interface technology,” allows a twofold improvement in heat removal over current methods and could pave the way to reduce industry’s reliance on complex and costly systems to cool chips.

The approach addresses the connection point between the hot chip and the various cooling components used today to draw the heat away, including heat sinks. Special particle-filled viscous pastes are typically applied to this interface to guarantee that chips can expand and contract owing to the thermal cycling. This paste is kept as thin as possible in order to transport heat from the chip to the cooling components efficiently. Yet, squeezing these pastes too thin between the cooling components and chip would damage or even crack the chip using conventional techniques.


This image shows a cross-sectional schematic of the cooling architecture using the high thermal conductivity interface. A highly viscous paste is brought between the chip cap and the hot chip in order to reduce the thermal resistance. Thanks to its tree-like branched channels, the architecture allows the paste to spread very homogenously and attains a thickness of less than 10 micrometers. With this technique, two times less pressure is needed to apply the paste and a twofold increase in cooling performance can be achieved. Image courtesy of IBM
Click here to enlarge image

Instead, the researchers used MEMS processing techniques to develop a chip cap with a network of tree-like branched channels on its surface. The pattern is designed such that when pressure is applied, the paste spreads much more evenly and the pressure remains uniform across the chip, allowing the right uniformity to be obtained with nearly two times less pressure, and a ten times better heat transport through the interface.


This image shows a cross-sectional schematic of the jet impingement cooling system that eliminates the thermal interface. Here, the hot chip is directly cooled by a multitude of small streams of water. The technique employs a distributed return architecture with alternating inlets and outlets to squirt small amounts of water onto the chip and suck them off again, The 50,000 channels are 30-50 micrometers wide and made with MEMS processing techniques. Image courtesy of IBM
Click here to enlarge image

The technique is one of several being explored by scientists at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory to address cooling. The researchers are also developing a novel and promising approach for water-cooling. Called direct jet impingement, it squirts water onto the back of the chip and sucks it off again in a closed system using an array of up to 50,000 tiny nozzles and a tree-like branched return architecture.

By using a closed system, there is no fear of coolant getting into the electronics. In addition, the team was able to enhance the cooling capabilities of the system by devising ways to apply it directly to the back of the chip, thereby avoiding the resistive thermal interfaces between the cooling system and the silicon.

IMEC demos feasibility of double patterning immersion litho for 32nm node

IMEC, the Leuven, Belgium, independent research center for micro and nanotech, showed in collaboration with ASML the potential of double patterning 193nm immersion lithography at 1.2NA for 32nm node Flash and logic.

The organizations said that the results prove that double patterning might be an intermediate solution before extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and very high NA (beyond water) 193nm immersion lithography will be ready for production.

The results were obtained by splitting gate levels of 32nm half pitch Flash cells as well as logic cells in two complementary designs. The splitting was done automatically using software from EDA partners in IMEC’s lithography program. After splitting, both designs received optical proximity corrections (OPC) and a classical lithography approach “litho-etch-litho-etch” was performed. Exposures of both lithography steps have been carried out on an XT:1700i at ASML.

IMEC and ASML say the results show that the XT:1700i 193nm immersion tool, which has a maximum NA of 1.2, could be extended beyond the 45nm node.

Nantero announces routine use of nanotubes in production CMOS fabs

Nantero Inc., a Woburn, Mass., company using carbon nanotubes for the development of next-generation semiconductor devices, announced it has resolved the major obstacles that had been preventing carbon nanotubes from being used in mass production in semiconductor fabs.

Nanotubes are widely acknowledged to hold great promise for the future of semiconductors, but most experts had predicted it would take a decade or two before they would become a viable material. This was due to several historic obstacles that prevented their use, including a previous inability to position them reliably across entire silicon wafers and contamination previously mixed with the nanotubes that made the nanotube material incompatible with semiconductor fabs.

Nantero said it has developed a method for positioning carbon nanotubes reliably on a large scale by treating them as a fabric which can be deposited using methods such as spincoating, and then patterned using lithography and etching. The company said it has been issued patents on all the steps in the process, as well as on the article of the carbon nanotube fabric itself, U.S. Patent No. 6,706,402, “Nanotube Films and Articles,” by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent relates to the article of a carbon nanotube film comprised of a conductive fabric of carbon nanotubes deposited on a surface. Nantero has also developed a method for purifying carbon nanotubes to the standards required for use in a production semiconductor fab, which means consistently containing less than 25 parts per billion of any metal contamination.

Changing of the guard


January 1, 2007

Which Mr. Smith will go to Washington on nano’s behalf?

At a hearing last summer, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) called nanotechnology the “next great global economic revolution.”

But Allen was defeated by Jim Webb in his Senate re-election bid, and regardless of whether nanotechnology fulfills Allen’s expectations, his enthusiasm will be hard to replace. At the state level, another prominent advocate of nanotechnology, New York Governor George Pataki, is leaving office and considering a run for the White House.

It is not clear yet who might replace them among nanotech’s leading government advocates – an especially acute concern given the decisions Congress makes about funding, the courts are making about patent law, and that regulatory agencies are making about product and materials development.

Click here to enlarge image

Who might step forward as the point man or woman for nano issues concerns Stephen Maebius, an attorney for intellectual property law firm Foley & Lardner in Washington, and a member of the NanoBusiness Alliance’s advisory board.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has compared the importance of nanotech commercialization to “nothing less than the equivalent of President Kennedy’s commitment of landing a man on the moon.” Photo courtesy of Senator Ron Wyden

Maebius says two members of Congress who could become the most visible on nanotech issues are Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas). Smith, says Maebius, is a strong supporter of nanotech and there is a cluster of nano-related companies in his district, which includes Austin.

“Wyden has been pretty strong in his support of nanotech from the start,” Maebius said. “I think he’ll continue in his support, and with the Democrats in power now, I think he’ll be influential in the Senate.”

Wyden has compared the importance of nanotech commercialization to “nothing less than the equivalent of President Kennedy’s commitment of landing a man on the moon.” Wyden is a co-chair of the Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus, founded in 2004 by Sen. Allen. Wyden’s caucus co-chairs include Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.).

Meanwhile, another “Smith” – Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) – has criticized the lack of U.S. R&D funding for nanotechnology and could emerge alongside his Oregon compatriot as a leading voice. Smith is the author of the Nanoscience to Commercialization Institutes Act, which provides $24 million to establish eight nanoscience institutes around the country to help bridge the gap between research and commercialization.

Rounding out the mix is Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who supports development of a Nanomanufacturing Investment Corporation that would combine federal funds and private capital into a development fund administered by the Department of Commerce; and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) who last year introduced the Research Competitiveness Act, which creates a tax incentive for investment funds that back nanotechnology start-ups.

Among the states, Oregon’s Ted Kulongoski has emerged as a leading nano governor. In addition to voicing support for Wyden and Smith’s Congressional initiatives, Kulongoski led a team that raised $20 million in capital to fund ONAMI, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, and last year secured a $7 million appropriation from the Oregon legislature to support ONAMI. In Pennsylvania, Governor Ed Rendell committed more than $50 million in funds to the Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology.
– Richard Acello

By Philippe Bado, Translume

The vast majority of microdevices are built out of silicon using photolithographic processes. This activity is supported by a huge industry, which provides the necessary materials and tools. Yet, while the return from investment in silicon technology has been enormous, it is clear that for some applications silicon is not an appropriate base material – and that for a significant subset glass is better.

Many designers have contemplated glass, but fabricating microdevices out of it is not easy. Glass producers and machine tool manufacturers have not developed glass micromachining capabilities. With few exceptions (optical fibers, for example) the glass-based devices people use today are produced with fifty-year-old technology, using tools designed to fabricate much larger components. Consequently, even when glass is the most desirable material for a given application, the microdevice designer is generally forced to settle for another material.

This situation is changing. For the last decade, numerous research groups, including our group at Translume, have been working to develop processes to micromachine fused silica (a high-end, ultra pure glass). Translume has developed a manufacturing platform that relies on femtosecond lasers to micromachine fused silica substrates. This workstation has a capability to machine complex geometric contours and shapes in three dimensions.

This computer-controlled tool is able to ablate glass, to induce local permanent index of refraction changes in glass, and to locally change the chemical reactivity of glass. We typically use our index change ability to create waveguides in the glass substrate, and we rely on the other processes to shape the boundaries of the glass substrate. In addition, often we create microfluidic features using the same tool.

Initially this novel manufacturing capability was to be used to manufacture glass-based components for the telecommunication market. As this market imploded and our early customers disappeared we were forced to re-evaluate our business model. We adapted our offering. Today, Translume is commercializing its micromachining capability in the form of a foundry or contract machining service.


The mobility of a fused silica linear translation stage is provided by integrated fused silica flexures, shown here. Photo courtesy of Translume
Click here to enlarge image

In parallel, we have moved to more receptive markets – our fabrication capability is used to manufacture small instruments and sensors for customers in the biomedical, aerospace, and defense industries. Yet before our manufacturing process finds wide acceptance, we still have to overcome two psychological barriers: We work with an uncommon material and our process is a linear process.

Unlike any other foundry, we work exclusively with fused silica. This is a well-known material, which has been used for decades. Ironically, it is not considered a high-tech material, except when deposited on top of a silicon wafer. Yet, fused silica offers a set of characteristics that compare favorably with silicon. It is transparent from the deep UV to the mid-infrared. It is compatible with all industrial and biological fluids (except hydrofluoric acid). And fused silica offers excellent thermal stability (its expansion coefficient is similar to that of Invar). These characteristics are well known.

Less known, or even counter-intuitive, is the fact that fused silica is a good material for manufacturing mechanical pieces that must flex or move (what we call MEMS in the silicon world). Glass is the epitome of a breakable material, or what material scientists call a brittle material; and thus one naturally assumes it can’t be used to manufacture MEMS. At the macroscopic level this is indeed true, but at the microscopic level fused silica is rather elastic and can be used successfully to manufacture glass MEMS (GMEMS).

The other mental barrier we face is related to the linear nature of our manufacturing process. Many MEMS industry experts have predicted that our process would find no commercial acceptance, as it is a serial process (opposed to the parallel process of photolithography). In response, we point out the overwhelming commercial success of CNC machining of metal elements, including advanced small components such as cardiac stents.

The Translume process starts with a very short laser pulse, on the order of 100 femtoseconds, that is focused to a point inside a glass substrate. At the focal point, the light intensity is so great that the glass is turned instantly to plasma through nonlinear absorption. Yet, since the pulse is extremely short, the glass almost immediately re-solidifies. With the proper laser parameters, one can control the local nanostructure of the re-solidified material and modify its physical properties.

We can locally change the index of refraction of the glass, or we can also locally change the chemical reactivity of the glass. The former process is used to manufacture optical microdevices while the latter process is used to create microfluidic and micromechanical devices. By combining these two processes, one can create microdevices with a unique and highly desirable set of optical, mechanical and fluidic properties.


The Translume process uses a direct-write workstation that provides an extremely short laser pulse, on the order of 100-femtoseconds, that is focused to a point inside a glass substrate. At the focal point, the glass is turned instantly to plasma but since the pulse is so short the glass almost immediately re-solidifies. With proper laser parameters, one can control the local nanostructure of the re-solidified material and modify its physical properties. Photo courtesy of Translume
Click here to enlarge image

We see an ability to fabricate devices using a mask-less approach as a key economic advantage for some high value markets such as the aerospace industry and the military. The lack of hard tooling for a given device has important cost-savings implications for both prototype development and long-term manufacturing.

The cost of prototype development in traditional lithographic processes is high since each design iteration requires a new mask set, and there is development time lost in waiting for hard tooling to be made. In addition, some long-term costs for direct write processes are lower due to the cost of storing and maintaining masks and other hard tools. The ability to use a single manufacturing step to define both optical and mechanical features dramatically simplifies device fabrication and eliminates alignment issues associated with sequential fabrication processes.

In order to demonstrate this point we recently manufactured a fused silica mesoscale linear translation stage with characteristics similar or superior to that found in similar devices made with traditional techniques. This device provides a mesoscale displacement capability (1 mm range) combined with an integrated sub-100-nm optical sensing accuracy capability. The mobility is provided by integrated fused silica flexures acting as elastic mode compliant elements. The position is read through an array of embedded optical waveguides. The device is fully monolithic, which eliminates most assembly costs.

Activities in glass micromachining have historically been extremely limited. However the recent development of manufacturing processes based on femtosecond lasers is creating a commercial opportunity. We believe that in the next few years glass-based micro-instruments and glass-based sensors will play a much more important role than is generally envisioned today and that engineers and instrument designers may gain a competitive advantage using glass as an alternative to metal and silicon.

Philippe Bado is president and chief technical officer of Translume Inc. (www.translume.com) in Ann Arbor, Mich. He can be reached at [email protected]

A trio of new reports outlined safety procedures nanotechnology labs and companies are practicing now and what research nanotechnologists should investigate over the next 15 years to help alleviate concerns about its risks.

The first international survey of nanotechnology workplace safety practices, commissioned by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON), collected data this summer from 64 organizations in North America, the European Union, Asia and Australia – from some 337 that were invited to participate. Roughly 80 percent of respondents were private sector companies.

The researchers, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found companies and labs are developing special programs and procedures for mitigating risks to workers and consumers – but they also noted that these nanotechnologists were often using conventional environmental, health and safety (EHS) practices when handling nanomaterials, even though they generally believed they might pose special risks for workers.

“Any time you establish a baseline of where progress is, it’s useful. It allows you to do an update analysis next year to see how things are trending. Maybe next year it’ll find dramatically more folks have different controls in place,” NanoBusiness Alliance executive director Sean Murdock said. “I do wish there was a level of segmentation in the report that distinguished between companies in the research stage and manufacturing stage.”

“Industry is working hard to collaborate on how best to work with nanomaterials,” in groups such as the Nanotechnology Occupational Safety & Health Consortium, which includes Intel, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Dow Chemical, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the U.K. Health & Safety Executive, said Senior Analyst Michael Holman at Lux Research.

In another recent EHS-related publication – a commentary appearing in the November 16 Nature – a group led by Andrew Maynard of the Woodrow Wilson Institute Project for Emerging Nanotechnologies developed a basic framework for research addressing nanotech risks.

The commentary pointed at completing five grand challenges over the next 15 years. These included the development of instruments to assess environmental exposure to nanomaterials, methods to evaluate the toxicity of nanomaterials, models for predicting the potential health and environmental impact of new, engineered nanomaterials, ways of evaluating the health and environmental impact of nanomaterials across their life cycle, and strategic programs to enable risk-focused research.

“It’s a useful summary of a lot of people’s thinking on research priorities,” Holman said. “A prominent piece like that is useful as a clear concise statement of what’s needed that everyone can point to, as a spur to public policy.”

It’s not the only one, either. ICF International of Fairfax, Va., released an analysis of the U.S. federal government’s efforts to research the human health and environmental consequences of nanotechnology.

In its report, ICF provides 14 specific policy recommendations built around three components. The first entails identifying the research that can inform priority risk management decisions. The second addresses research management and offers recommendations for the completion of timely and policy-relevant research. The third component focuses on how research results can be used to support sound risk management decisions.
– Charles Q. Choi

By Steve Leach, NovaCentrix

The silicon industry has achieved stunning advances over its nearly 50 year history. Every new generation of technology has offered increased computing power, faster operating speeds, and lower costs, which have enabled electronics to penetrate every facet of our lives. There remain, however, potential applications for which conventional silicon technology is not viable, either due to cost, fragility, or time to market considerations. For such applications, printable electronics is a new disruptive technology.

Printable electronics represents the merger of electronics and printing. The concept is to use high speed printing equipment to build electronic devices using specialized inks that when cured provide the basic building blocks of circuits: conductors, resistors, semiconductors, and dielectrics. Compared to standard equipment for manufacturing semiconductors and electronics, printing equipment is fast, inexpensive, and large area (i.e. “wide-web”), factors which together enable the promise of low cost and large area printable electronics.

The range of applications for printable electronics is quite large, encompassing RFID tags, flexible displays, sensors, photovoltaics, batteries, lighting, and logic and memory. The ability to print on common packaging materials will further extend applications into product branding and value-added packaging. The recent formation of industry initiatives around printable electronics is validation of the potential impact of printable electronics. For example, iNEMI’s “2007 International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative Roadmap” will include a section on organic and printable electronics. That document is scheduled to be available to the public in February 2007.


The chart shows an optimized cure routine for silver film on Mylar based on photonic cure resistivity data for a 2.5 micron thick silver film. Data courtesy of NovaCentrix.
Click here to enlarge image

Printable electronics is still an emerging technology, and there are technology gaps to be met before widespread adoption can occur. One such gap is the need for low temperature curing (or sintering or annealing) methods. Conductive inks, for example, are typically metallic-based, and must be sintered to realize high conductivities, which requires time and temperature. Lower temperatures generally mean longer processing times. A cure time of one minute on a 2,000 FPM (feet per minute) web necessitates a curing oven with nearly a half mile heated web path. Higher temperatures, on the other hand, can reduce the sintering time, but at the cost of requiring expensive substrates that can withstand the high temperatures. What is needed is a low temperature and rapid process for curing or sintering.

In response to this need, NovaCentrix has developed “photonic curing” technology, a low temperature, rapid sintering process. NovaCentrix Photonic Curing Systems instantly cure metal nanoparticle-based inks by exposing them to a brief, intense pulse of light from a xenon flash lamp. The system rapidly and selectively heats and fuses nanoscale metallic ink particles, forming highly conductive traces without heating the base substrate material. The technology operates at room temperature and is very fast. The energy is broadcast over the whole substrate with no need for shadow masks or expensive alignment techniques, and since it is in the form of light rather than heat, the energy will not damage thermally sensitive components or materials.

Photonic curing technology relies on the physical properties of nanoparticles. Metal nanoparticles are generally black and light absorbing. They have a high surface area to mass ratio, requiring very little light to heat them. A continuous source of radiation will heat the particles and within a few milliseconds they will transfer heat to the substrate. If the source of radiation is pulsed, with a duration that is shorter than the thermal equilibration time of the particles and substrate, then the nanoparticles will quickly heat and sinter before they can transfer much energy to the substrate.

The ideal radiant energy appears to be on the order of 1 J/cm2 delivered in about 1 ms for most systems of interest. Longer pulses require more energy to cure the particles and transfer too much heat to the substrate. Shorter pulses can vaporize smaller particles in the film, build up thermal gradients in the substrate, and explosively blow apart the film. Ideal curing conditions are determined by the particle type, size, film thickness, substrate type, substrate thickness, and particle binder system.


NovaCentrix has built a research and development system, the PCS-1100, for developing printable electronics applications or materials. The cure area, areal energy density, and the pulse length of the arc discharge are all adjustable. Photo courtesy of NovaCentrix
Click here to enlarge image

Photonic curing utilizes xenon strobes as a light source rather than lasers. Xenon strobes are preferable for several reasons. For example, lasers are far more complex and expensive devices. In addition, xenon strobes are far more efficient in converting electrical energy to light, with conversion efficiencies typically in the 50 percent range, which is 10 times greater than what is possible with the type of laser needed to cure metal particle-based films.

The technology behind photonic curing is closely related to NovaCentrix’s proprietary nanoparticle synthesis process, which begins with two metal rods in an enclosed tank. A high-power pulsed arc discharge (50 to 100 kA over 1ms duration) is drawn between the rods in an atmospheric pressure gas. The material at the end of the rods is ablated and heated to form a high-pressure (10-100 Atm) metal plasma. The plasma supersonically expands and quenches, yielding nanometer sized, single crystal, unaggregated particles in a gas suspension. These particles are conveyed out, collected, the rods are indexed in toward each other, and the process is repeated. The pulse frequency controls the production rate. By changing the composition of the quench gas from inert to reactive, either metals or metal compounds can be made.

Photonic curing uses a similar process to generate the intense light needed to cure nanometal-based films. The arc discharge is lower, so as to remain below the threshold that would normally ablate the electrodes and make nanoparticles. Even with the lower power discharge, the radiation is still dramatically more intense than that from a typical camera strobe. Just as with the nanoparticle synthesis process, the pulse duration and intensity can be varied, providing independent control over both the power and energy delivered to a surface.

Besides low temperature curing, there are additional benefits of photonic curing that make it suitable for printable electronics.

  • By reducing the time to cure to less than a millisecond, photonic curing can be compatible with high-speed printing processes such as gravure and flexography without a large amount of dedicated floor space. In essence, the time to cure becomes matched to the time to print.
  • The process is suited to nanoparticle-based materials, which also makes it well-suited to high resolution deposition methods and applications.
  • The speed with which sintering occurs makes it possible to cure copper in air, which normally must be cured in an inert or reducing environment. NovaCentrix has demonstrated curing nano-copper based conductive inks in air, achieving resistivities below 40X bulk. This benefit opens the door to the use of inks that use lower cost materials.
  • Once a material has been sintered, it will typically no longer absorb light. Thus there is the potential for building multilayer circuitry that does not thermally stress the underlying layers.

NovaCentrix has built a research and development system to scan curing conditions to optimize the conductivity of several films and substrates. The cure area, areal energy density, and the pulse length of the arc discharge are all adjustable.

When customers develop applications taking advantage of the benefits of photonic curing, there will be a need for high volume, continuous feed curing systems. In anticipation of this need, NovaCentrix is developing such systems, and has recently delivered a pilot-scale unit designed to cure Metalon branded inks on continuous films at speeds up to 50 feet per minute. NovaCentrix will continue developing high-speed commercial systems for integration with ink-jet, flexographic and gravure printing systems. These are intended to enable or accelerate the commercialization of printable electronics in RFID tags, displays, photovoltaics and other applications.

Steve Leach is chief executive officer of NovaCentrix (www.novacentrix.com) in Austin, Texas.

By Richard Acello

In Scandinavian mythology, a troll is a mischievous dwarf that lives under a bridge. In modern technology, a patent troll is a company that acquires intellectual property in order to sit on the bridge between invention and commercialization and collect a toll. Or threaten a lawsuit.

While trolls like these are considered a nuisance on the path to development, others have actually enabled development by gathering the IP in a given technology, making a one stop licensing shop for developers.

Whether a company can survive on the licensing fees of the patents it holds is debatable, but there’s little doubt that holders of patents of intellectual property are crucial to the development of new technologies such as nanotechnology.

“What’s a troll?” asked John Paul, a partner at the Washington, D.C. firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett and Dunner. “I don’t think there’s a clear definition, but a popular one is an organization that is licensing patents, but is not selling products, just collecting money and not contributing to the development of technology. But the real objection is in having to pay someone.”

That’s because two companies with interesting intellectual property who are also developing or commercializing a product may be able to work out a cross-licensing deal, in which fees are reduced or dropped altogether.

Some firms that appear to be trolls may be unfairly branded, says Tim Hsieh, an intellectual property partner at Min, Hsieh, and Hack in Tyson’s Corner, Va. Hsieh points to Rambus, a company that licenses technology it has developed but is not selling in the market.

“Patent trolls are just a byproduct of the patent system,” said Hsieh. And anyway, Paul adds, a company has to have some talent in recognizing which patents are likely to pay off.

That’s why it’s difficult for a company to make a living sitting on bridges and waiting for product developers to show up.

“Long term, I don’t think licensing alone is a successful business model,” says Steve Jensen, a partner at Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear in Orange County, Calif. “Companies such as Texas Instruments and IBM have made patent licensing a successful piece of their overall businesses, but these have large portfolios. For a one-time hit, as an investor, it’s like investing in something with a kind of return I don’t expect to continue.”

That’s because patents run out, but the product itself will continue to evolve, perhaps without the technology for which the troll holds the patents.

“So you would have to continually acquire assets of value,” said Jensen.

And whether the patents have value may be a matter of timing. “Some patents don’t have a great deal of value because the market never developed around them,” Jensen added. “You have to be able to choose the development path the market is going to select and sometimes there are several paths.”

While some licensors are strictly a nuisance, others enable technology by having all the rights product developers need in one place.

“It has worked in some of the video standards, like MPEG,” said Scott Harris, a partner with Fish & Richardson in San Diego. “It developed into a standard partly for the reason that people could acquire the licenses in one place.”

Nanotechnology is such a wide open field with possible paths to so many products that experts predict there will be patents for every application an inventor can conceive. “Then there will be particular paths of each use of the technology,” Jensen said.

Another possible bonanza will be technologies that weren’t able to get off the ground, but with a nano push suddenly become doable. Take the case of a drug that couldn’t be delivered to the brain, but can with the addition of nanotechnology.

In such a case, Jensen advises filing a new patent that covers both the previously discovered drug and the nanotech delivery scheme.

Paul says a real troll is a company that files frivolous lawsuits or engages in other inappropriate behavior. On Nov. 3, a federal jury in Arizona returned a guilty verdict against patent holders Verve LLC and law firm Simon, Galasso and Frantz, which was also a defendant in the case.

“On the undisputed evidence, Mr. Galasso created a shell entity whose sole function was to suggest to patent owners that it be allowed to bring actions alleging infringement of those patents even where those owners were not aggrieved by anyone’s conduct,” said Judge Frederick Martone. That’s about as good a definition of a troll as the nanotech industry is going to get.

State Rankings


January 1, 2007

The fourth category – innovation – of our state rankings shows a good deal of consistency in what is usually a very volatile category. The top-five states remained the same, though their order shifted a bit. And seven out of the top-10 were there last year. But three new states, Ohio, Virginia and New Jersey, jumped into the top-10.

The map below and the charts on the facing page comprise the fourth installment of our ongoing series that ranks the U.S. states for their micro- and nanotechnology development.


Sources: Small Times uses patent data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark office and SBIR and STTR data from the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, as well as other proprietary data sources.
Click here to enlarge image

The category presented here – innovation – is one of five categories used to generate a state’s overall score. In the previous three issues, analyses of venture capital investment, micro and nanotech density, and research were presented. A compilation of the current series of individual categories is scheduled for the July/August 2007 issue of Small Times magazine.

1. California

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that California tops the innovation list, repeating its number-one slot from our last rankings. It topped both the patent performance and grant performance measures, largely on the size of California’s piece of the national pie. The weak links for the Golden State are the comparisons of micro-nano activity in the state to overall activity. Patents and grants were no exceptions. For example, in the sub-measure that looked at micro-nano grant density by comparing the number of micro-nano grants in a state to the overall number of grants awarded to that state, California was seventh – a function of the state’s large and diverse economy.

2. New Mexico

If California is mildly penalized for the size of its overall economy, New Mexico benefits from it. The state moved up from the third slot in innovation the last time around to second this year, besting Massachusetts by a mere 1.5 points. The state was buoyed by an extremely strong patent performance, partly the result of its federal labs. But it was no slouch on the grant side either, coming in sixth in the measure – likely the result of an increasingly active small tech business community.

3. Massachusetts

The Bay State would have been an easy number two if not for New Mexico’s patent score. It was a solid third in both the patent and grant measures, with an extremely strong showing on the grant side. Like California, Massachusetts also has a large and diverse economy but so much of it is technology-based that its density scores don’t take as much of a beating as California’s do.

4. Michigan

Michigan moved up a notch in this year’s innovation category by climbing above Texas. The two states have competed neck-and-neck for many years and actually tied for fifth in the overall rankings in 2005. Michigan was just off the top-10 list in the patent measure, but scored a stellar second behind California in small tech grant performance, giving it the nod for number four.

5. Texas

A perennial placer, Texas held off a strong-charging New York to stay in the top-five. It fared reasonably well in the patent measure, netting a ninth-place slot, but performed considerably better in the grant performance measure with a fourth-place showing.

6. New York

Like California and Massachusetts, New York takes a bit of a hit because of its overall size. No matter how big micro and nanotech gets in the state, it’s still just a small part of the pie. Nevertheless, New York placed a solid sixth in the innovation category, up two slots from an eighth-place innovation showing last year. Patenting was its stronger suit, as the Empire State notched a fourth-place score in the measure.

7. Ohio

While it wouldn’t be right to call it a surprise given the state’s strong industrial and economic base, Ohio came from off the chart to make a top-10 performance in this year’s rankings. Its 10th-place patent score helped, but it really got a boost from its grant performance, where the state bested all but four others.

8. Virginia

Virginia also hauled itself onto the top-10 list from a non-showing last year. Military-related contracts certainly help, as the state was seventh in grant performance. The irony, of course, is that the nature of the industry means a lot of what takes place doesn’t show up in the public records of either patents or grants.

9. Colorado

Colorado fell a few slots from last year’s ranking, moving from sixth to ninth in what can be a very volatile category. There’s a good chance the state will move up again with the recently launched Colorado Nanotechnology Alliance.

10. New Jersey

Like Colorado, New Jersey crept onto the top-10 list on the basis of a combined strong score even though it didn’t make the top-10 in either individual measure. Kudos to the Garden State: Last year it didn’t make the list.
– David Forman

Two micro- and nano-specific measures are used to generate the innovation scores reflected in the map. Individual scores for the top-10 in each measure are reflected in the charts below.

The two measures each include various sub-measures designed to balance out a state’s strengths relative to its size and relative to the amount of micro- and nanotech activity taking place on a national level. Additional details are available under each chart.

The final scores on the map are calculated by taking the average of the two scores shown here, then normalizing the result on a 100-point scale.


This score is calculated from three sub-measures that quantify which states had the most micro or nano inventors (inventor data), which states were nabbing the most inventions (assignee in state, inventor out of state) from others, and which states were inventing and keeping it in the state at the same time. To generate the final patent score, the sub-measures were normalized on a 100-point scale and then their average was taken and again normalized on a 100-point scale.
Click here to enlarge image

null


This score is calculated from two sub-measures that quantify which states had the most micro or nano grants relative to the overall micro-nano federal grants and which states had the most micro-nano grants relative to each state’s overall grants of any type. The results were normalized on a 100-point scale. Then they were averaged and weighted (by the percent of total grants) and the result was normalized on a 100-point scale.
Click here to enlarge image

null