Nanotechnology: Building from the Bottom and Building the Bottom Line

JOM, Dec 2005 by Imerito, Thomas

BUILDING THE TOOLS FOR FINDING THE BOTTOM

When, in 1959. Richard Feynman exhorted fellow scientists to share his vision of a world in which atoms would be used like tiny bricks to construct macro-scale objects from "the bottom up," he set off a contest of minds that resulted in the granting of his wish for microscopes 100 times more powerful than those of that day. Scanning-electron microscopes had been around for almost 30 years when Feynman gave his address, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." But the tools of Feynman's time did not satisfy his vision of the future. Feynman was not content to simply see atoms; he wanted to manipulate them as well. Twenty-three years later, in 1982, the first scanning-tunneling microscope (STM) was born. A short seven years after that, in 1989, Don Bigler, a scientist at IBM, made Feynman's vision a reality when he used an STM to spell out his employer's corporate initials, IBM, by arranging 35 individual xenon atoms on a nickel substrate. Today, that image remains a hallmark of advanced microscopy.

Scientists and technologists have long appreciated the value of small particles. Stories of medieval glassmakers using gold nanoparticles to make brilliant red stained glass have found their way to the mainstream. More recently, and perhaps less known, United States Steel Corporation was using nanotechnology to make tougher steel for oil and gas pipelines as early as the 195Os. According to Joseph Defilippi, U.S. Steel product technology director, the company used solid-phase titanium nitride and niobium carbide nanoparticles in steel to increase fracture toughness for desert and arctic environments long before the term "nano" came into vogue. Defilippi attributes nanotechnology's emergence as the next wave of scientific advancement to early work in the field of metallurgy. "As a result of what we called micro-alloying in the '50s and '60s, the steel industry has a 50-year history in nanotechnology, even though we didn't use the term nano back then," Defilippi said.

U.S. Steel Technical Manager Todd Osman characterized the nanoscale promotion of nucleation and controlled inhibition of crystal growth as an early form of in-situ self-assembly-one of the holy grails of nanoscience today. "The large number of nucleation sites provided by the nanosized particles promotes rapid crystal face impingement, which inhibits further growth. yielding smaller grains and tougher steel," he said.

In pursuit of the company's quest for product improvements. U.S. Steel commissioned and built the first one million volt electron microscope in the United States in 1967. A custom-designed building, shielded to prevent lightning-like discharges of electricity from striking the earth, housed the 13.6 tonne, 5 meter tall instrument. Today, archival photographs of the mammoth microscope look as though they were taken on a science fiction movie set (shown on the cover and in Figure 1). Modern scanning-electron microscopes are considerably more compact.

"The fundamentals of electron microscopy have been understood since the 1930s," said Michael Simko, a physicist with U.S. Steel. "Over the years electronics have gotten better and better, so that today you can have a scanning-electron microscope on your desk or in the back of a small truck for on-site forensics."

A BURGEONING FIELD

Today, the market for advanced microscopes is saturated, said Matthew Nordan, vice president of Lux Research, a nanotechnology research firm. "The big growth period in laboratory instrumentation happened in 2001 and 2002 when nanotechnology initiatives sponsored by the (United) States took sales of those types of instruments to a new plateau. But over the last several years, they have been essentially flat," Nordan said. Nordan expects that the next surge in nano capital equipment sales will be a few years down the road and will be driven by sales of corporate nanofabrication equipment, principally nanolithography tools and to a lesser degree, insilico modeling tools.

Lux's projections fit well with the experience of Gary Homonai, business development manager for the Northeastern United States for CH2M HILL IDC nanofabrication facilities designers and builders. Homonai sees no letup in demand for fabs. as the facilities are known in the industry. "From the architectural side, around the country, our business is in an upswing," Homonai said. "It is important to keep in mind that nano instruments just don't disappear. They are recycled. But whenever a recycled instrument finds a new home, it needs a clean room, designed for vibration tolerance and electromagnetic interference," Homonai said.

The influx of high-level instrumentation into government, corporate, and university laboratories around the world suggests that a global race for profits from nanotechnology has begun in earnest. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) predicts nano-commerce will reach $1 trillion by 2015.

According to Lux Research, last year the world rang up $8.6 billion in combined government, corporate, and venture capital investment in nanotechnology. Government investment held the largest share at $4.6 billion with the United States leading at $1.6 billion, followed by Japan at $1 billion. China ranked eighth in spending, with $130 million, and second in published scientific articles with 13%, behind the United States with 24%.