Electronics has been miniaturizing since Edison first stuck a charged plate into one of his new light bulbs. But when one shrinks things to the scale of just a few molecules, things get very different. The molecules may take on new and unexpected properties compared to their more massive siblings. Coping with these new properties, exploiting them, and ultimately predicting and designing them is the business of nano tech.
The Albany Nanotech Center
The realm of nano-tech is at the size of a one-billionth of a meter (a nano-meter). That area hovers between the physical world we know and the quantum domain. It is that very straddling the border that gives nano-particles their unpredictability. The vision, already partly realized, is that engineers can define the specifications they need for a given application, whether it be strength, pliability, thermodynamic properties, or electrical ones, and a substance can be made to order, or at least nearly so. To achieve such results, molecules require specialized equipment and environmental controls. These facilities are expensive, and that is where nano-technology centers come in. The Albany Nanotech Center was established at the University at Albany in 2001 for doing independent research and creating a user facility wherein other companies can use its equipment for a fee. So at any given time, the center has employees of dozens of different industries and universities as well as its own staff. Industrial parks have also sprung up nearby to create synergy not so different than what the semiconductor industry has in California. Other institutes devoted to this technology have sprung up around the world, while Albany Nanotech has evolved into the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and has grown to a sprawling complex of 70,000 sq.-ft. in Albany alone, with satellites throughout New York State. The college now has some 300 global partners including IBM, Applied Materials, and SEMANTECH. It has created over 2600 R&D jobs in the area. And it is still growing.
The applications are breathtakingly diverse. A property can be imbued with a marker, such as fluorescence so it can be tracked, perhaps in the discovery of disease. The nano scale is also the size at which much biology actually occurs, so there is already an impressive array of medicines and treatments, with lots more on the way. New building materials are being created, new chemical catalysts developed, leading to new water desalination and sewage treatment facilities.
One of the most promising of the applications is in production and storage of electrical energy. While most frontiers in electronics are moving at a tremendous pace, battery technology is lagging badly by comparison. Micro-batteries made of graphene (a nano tech enabled material used at many nano tech institutes and the subject of a 2010 Nobel Prize), are being implanted in animals and humans for biological research and treatment. Larger batteries using similar technology promise to improve battery efficiency and free us from having to charge our phones every day. The largest energy storage developments are used in improving the reliability of the power grid.
So what can possibly go wrong? One thing is safety. The new materials are unpredictable, some of them may be toxic, and they are all smaller that that screened by most filters. Hence, there is always a potential hazard . Of course the hazards depend on the materials being used, but new micro filter technologies have developed along with the materials research. The large tech centers are well aware of this, and have taken appropriate steps, including use of ‘clean rooms’ and deployment of filters, to see that the workers are protected, and the materials do not escape to the larger world. Ensuring the environment from this particular type of hazard is becoming an industry in itself.We will know that the vision has fully succeeded when Silicon Valley is known as the Hudson Valley of the West, instead of the other way around. Till then we can get our impressions by looking at nano tech companies on the stock market, observing the the sprawling architecture of the nano-tech foundries (How does a technology so small need buildings so big?), and noting all the new and promising products coming to market. The 21st Century alchemists have already transformed the Erie Canal neighborhood into something very much like gold .