Foresight Update 32
page 4
A publication of the Foresight Institute
Media Watch 32
by Lew Phelps
The New York Times carried a major story in its
February 17, 1998, issue analyzing advances in the world of
single wall nanotubes. Science Reporter Malcolm W. Browne's
article Entitled " The
Next Electronics Breakthrough: Carbon Atoms," predicts
that "this elegantly geometrical molecule is about to ignite
a revolution in electronics, computers, chemistry and new
structural materials."
The article focuses most intensively on the electronic
properties of single-wall nanotubes: "Several recent reports
show that nanotubes...can perform the same electronic functions
as vastly larger silicon-based devices. As a result, a computer
based on nanotube devices could be extremely compact, fast and
powerful," Browne wrote.
The story extensively reports on the work of Dr. Alex
Zettl and his research group at the University of California
at Berkeley. They "recently showed that when two slightly
dissimilar nanotube molecules are joined together end to end, the
"junction" between them functions as an electronic
device called a diode. Diodes are the basis of rectifiers,
devices that are commonly used to convert alternating current
into direct current.
'When we grow nanotubes,' Dr. Zettl said, 'electronic devices
naturally form on them..'"
Zettl and his Berkeley colleague, Dr. Phillip G. Collins,
presented a paper on this topic at the 1997 Foresight Conference,
entitled "Nanoscale
Electronic Devices on Carbon Nanotubes."
The Times article continued, "Looking
farther into the future, Dr. Zettl suggested that clumps of
carbon nanotubes might spontaneously organize their electronic
interactions into complex webs analogous to the neural networks
of the brain. The density of nanotube interconnections achieved
by clumping them together is staggering; if all the nanotube
carbon molecules that could be packed into a one-half-inch cube
were laid end to end, they would extend 250,000 miles. Dr. Zettl
speculated in an interview that a random jumble of nanotubes in
such a cube could generate a network of nanocomputers that might
be able to perform complex tasks and to reconfigure itself to
improve its own efficiency."
Browne's story also reports on the work of Dr. Jie Han and his
colleages at NASA Ames Research Center (also presented at the
Foresight Conference in a paper entitled "Design and
Study of Carbon Nanotube Electronic Devices.") They
"recently reported that by inserting defects into the
junctions between metal-like nanotubes and semiconductor
nanotubes, they had created a variety of junction types within a
single nanotube molecule," Browne wrote.
Citing stories in Nature magazine (see the "Recent
Progresss" column in this issue for details), the Times
also reported on work by two teams, one at Harvard University and
the other from Delft University in the Netherlands and Rice
University, regarding the changing electrical properties of
nanotubes as they are built with different twisting in their
structures—if the carbon hexagons along the length of the
nanotube line up straight, it's a conductor; if they are twisted,
the nanotube acts as a semiconductor (and therefore could be used
to create a switch, with computing applications).
According to the Times, bulk-produced nanotubes
already are being put to commercial use: "Hyperion Catalysis
International Company of Cambridge, Mass., adds small amounts
of these molecules to plastic to make the plastic electrically
conductive. Conductive plastics are used by the automotive
industry to make parts that are coated with electrically charged
droplets of paint. This electrostatic painting process saves most
of the paint otherwise wasted by conventional spraying and
applies a more even coat."
The Times story concludes with a broader look at
the potentials of nanotubes, quoting Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley,
among others.
The author has written previously about molecular-level
structural matters, including a major story last July about the
synthesis of cubanes (a cube, with a carbon atom at each of its
eight corners, an electron bond connecting each pair of adjacent
carbon atoms, and a hydrogen atom attached to each carbon).
 Foresight Senior Associate
Marc Arnold, who conceived of the Feynman Grand Prize and
contributed substantial funding to it along with Senior Associate
Jim von Ehr, was featured in a major story in the Wall
Street Journal on December 24, 1997. Staff Reporter
Quentin Hardy reported on the efforts by Arnold's Angel
Technologies Corp. to develop a high-flying, long endurance
aircraft that would fly circular patterns over large cities and
serve as a data relay—like a communications satellite, but
without the high cost and transmission delays. Arnold's
epoxy-hulled aircraft faces lots of competition from other
concepts, including an unmanned blimp being developed by a
company founded by former White House Chief of Staff Alexander M.
Haig Jr. and his son Alex P. Haig.
"Angel's idea 'is interesting, and very cheap,' says
Richard Siber, a telecommunications consultant with Andersen
Consulting in Boston. 'It now takes $1 million to put up a
cellular tower, including hardware, software, zoning and real
estate, and Boston has over 300 cell sites. It's not crazy to try
something more cost-effective.'"
Angel's plane, called a Proteus, is being built by Scaled
Composites Inc., which is run by Burt Rutan, a prominent designer
of experimental aircraft, including the Voyager, which in 1986
flew around the world on a single tank of gas, the Journal
reported.
More recently, an artists' rendition of the Angel Technologies
aircraft served as the cover illustration on the April 1998 issue
of Scientific American. The cover illustration
represented a series of six stories in the magazine about
Wireless Technologies. The project was briefly discussed in one
of the articles, "Telecommunications for the 21st
Century" by University of Colorado professor Joseph N.
Pelton.
Web
Watch 32
By Jim Lewis
The number of Websites with technical information relevant to
nanotechnology has become too large for this column to cover
comprehensively. One way to quickly find some of these sites is
to explore the home pages of the researchers who presented at the
most recent Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology. The
list of all the abstracts presented can be found at http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Abstracts/index.html.
Many of the abstracts contain links, not only to the full papers,
but to the home page of the author, where there is often much
related material. To pick just one example, Michael P. Frank gave
a talk on "Ultimate
Theoretical Models of Nanocomputers." His home page http://www.ai.mit.edu/~mpf/mpf.html
offers links to on-line versions of many of his publications, and
to an extensive page on reversible computing http://www.ai.mit.edu/~mpf/rc/home.html.
Since the heat generated by erasing bits in conventional computer
architectures would become a significant limitation to the
operation of nanocomputers, anyone interested in nanocomputers
would find this web site a substantial resource.
As the pace of research in nanotechnology accelerates, more
and more news stories featuring advances in nanotechnology appear
on the Web. Unfortunately many of these are only posted for a
short time on Web sites run by news organizations, and then they
either disappear altogether or into archives only accessible to
subscribers. Here are a few items that are still available
several months after their original posting:
http://www.lucent.com/press/1197/971119.blb.html
"Bell Labs Says Transistor Is World's Smallest "
briefly reports progress in top down fabrication technologies
into the range of tens of nanometers feature sizes. This
"nanotransistor" is seen as applicable to a practical
microchip in the near future, and is "four times smaller,
five times faster and draws 60 to 160 times less power than
today's transistors."
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9711/22/micro.car/index.html
"A Lilliputian car enthralls scientists" reports the
miniaturization accomplishments of workers in Australia in
fabricating a 5-mm long car that travels at 0.36 kmh.
Although these two accomplishments have nothing to do with
molecular nanotechnology, they are not necessarily irrelevant to
Foresight's interests. As explained by John McPherson, who
forwarded the above two items:
"The good thing about these nano-electronic advances is
that it improves our ability to do computational nanotechnology.
The really interesting thing about the Bell labs nano-chip is
that it is reportedly ten years ahead of the industry curve. This
is a good example of an advancement that can be made when no one
expects it, kind of like the sheep cloning advancement that
shocked everyone. This advancement, however, is small compared to
a potential major molecular nanotechnology advancement. This
highlights the importance of the Foresight Institute and the need
to prepare for sudden technological advancements."
http://www.ibm.com/Stories/1997/12/sm1.html
In recognition of the growing importance of nanotechnology, IBM,
long a leader in nanotechnology research, has collected on one
page links to the company's achievements in nanotechnology
research. The five pages at this site emphasize the many
contributions of IBM scientists to scanning probe microscopy, and
contain links to more information at other IBM Websites and
elsewhere.
The Institute of Physics Publishing PhysicsWeb http://physicsweb.org/ featured
an article on carbon-based electronics, by Drs. Deepak Srivastava
of the NASA Ames Research Center and Madhu Menon of the
University of Kentucky, as the news of the week article for
December 5, 1997 http://physicsweb.org/cgi-bin/Mags/PW/article/news-1997-12-01-01-49-06.
The Carnegie Mellon University Video Library http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/video.html
contains a video of a lecture on "Nanocomputers and
Molecular Engineering" given by Dr. K. Eric Drexler in 1990 http://ulserver.speech.cs.cmu.edu/v/drexler/.
The VXtreme plugin is necessary to view the lecture. It can be
downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/vxtreme/plugin.htm,
but unfortunately the current version does not appear to be
compatible with the most recent versions of Netscape Communicator
or of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The Electronic Engineering Times Website http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/823/
now runs a regular column on nanotechnology http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/column1/nano/nano.html,
written by Bill Spence. An archive of past columns is available.
http://www.nanochip.com/
is the Web page of a new company announcing "a new type of
digital mass storage device, of which components also have
application in ultra-high resolution lithography and device
fabrication, based on arrays of atomic probes."
Nanotechnology has been a popular topic among debaters (see,
for example, the article "Debating
Nanotechnology" in Update 9). Now resources
geared to the needs of those debating nanotechnology, including
advice on specific debating strategies, are available on the web,
although occasionally with some minor confusion on technical
issues.
http://www.cla.sc.edu:80/THSP/faculty/berube/index.htm,
maintained by David M. Berube of the University of South
Carolina. In addition to articles and course material on debate
and argumentation, and on popular culture, there are articles on
"Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side," and
"Nanosocialism". Those wishing to debate some of
Berube's conclusions might wish to visit these articles using http://crit.org/ to enter their own
annotations.
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/2253/Nano.htm,
maintained by Brian Wassom, contains an extensive list of links
to nanotechnology pages that might have information of use to
debaters.
http://www.iglobal.net/paradigm/hitchhiker/nano.html,
a feature of the Hitchhiker's WebQuarters for CX debaters,
compiled by Paradigm Research, presents debating strategies and
references.
http://www.oxfordnano.com/contents.html
"Nanotechnology: Progress and Prospects" by David Howie
of Oxford Nanotechnology PLC http://www.oxfordnano.com/
offers a comprehensive review of nanotechnology, complete with a
very useful glossary of technical terms. This review focuses on
technical progress, covers molecular nanotechnology, also known
as molecular manufacturing, but emphasizes the broader area of
nanoscale science and technology that is often included under the
term nanotechnology. The first chapter provides a history of the
term, explains the different definitions in use, discusses the
motivations driving work at the nanometer scale, summarizes top
down and bottom up approaches to manufacturing, speculates on
time scales for implementation of different types of
nanotechnology, and gives an overview of organizational support
and funding for nanotechnology research. Similar surveys of
active organizations and funding are included in the subsequent
chapters.
The second chapter, on molecular nanotechnology, presents the
history of the concepts and some of the controversies that have
surrounded it, and then gives a solid description of some current
work in computational nanotechnology and in the theory of
nanomachines. Included in this chapter are concise and
informative reviews of quantum electronics, quantum computation,
and instrumentation for nanoscale measurements and manipulation.
The third chapter summarizes nanoscale research related to
nanotechnology: friction at the atomic scale, nanocrystals, thin
films, fullerenes, microsystems and MEMS, molecular electronics,
supramolecular chemistry, and molecular biology. Coverage for
each of these topics is necessarily limited in depth, but the
wide overview of which fields are relevant is quite valuable. The
fourth chapter tackles nanolithography in considerable detail
(apparently the area of Howie's principal technical expertise).
These chapters are erudite and technical, but very well
written and accessible to anyone with a general technical
background. There are few technical errors. Each chapter is
well-referenced, but primarily to the print literature, with few
web links. An annoying minor detail is that some numbers that
appear to be exponents are not formatted as exponents.
This scholarly and well-researched study will be useful to
anyone interested in prospects for developing nanotechnology in
the next decade or two. It is interesting that although Howie
tries to give a balanced assessment, he is skeptical that a
mature molecular nanotechnology is feasible. Why he is skeptical,
however, is not entirely clear. He cites, and then refutes,
various complaints that others have made about the feasibility of
molecular manufacturing. For example: "At the very least,
all claims that his [Drexler's] structures in some way violate
physical laws have been plausibly defused." Howie notes that
the technical obstacles to be overcome before molecular
manufacturing is practical are formidable, but then states:
"Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that throughout
history the speed of scientific progress has routinely confounded
the most expert of commentators." Also: "The idea of
molecular manufacturing is often ridiculed. Yet molecular
machines of a greater sophistication than those dreamt of by
molecular nanotechnologists already exist [in biological
systems]."
The prinicipal reason for his negative view of molecular
manufacturing seems to be that some of the consequences that have
been predicted are prima facie "outlandish":
"The credibility of molecular manufacturing is low because
many commentators do not restrict themselves to theoretical
issues." He then speaks condescendingly of "rather
endearingly American neuroses", such as "personal
empowerment and self-expression", "life-extension
through cryogenic preservation of the body", "extreme
individualism", space travel, and "terraforming and
colonization of other planets".
He does raise the legitimate and cogent argument that how
nanotechnology is implemented and controlled, and thus its
availability, has the potential to exacerbate already serious
social divisions. "These comments are intended not as
criticisms, but as reminders that technological speculation is a
contingent activity that is always performed in some specific
cultural context. It does seem likely, though, that if
nanotechnology products do become commonplace, their technical
complexity, and the decreasing control users will have in the
event of malfunctions, will foster increased feeling of
alienation and impotence among powerless or disenfranchised
social groups."
These points confirm that from the standpoint of Foresight's mission of "Preparing
for nanotechnology", establishing technical credibility is
only half the battle. There are severe cultural barriers (fears?)
to thinking seriously about implications of nanotechnology that
stretch widespread and millenia-old assumptions about human
existence. In particular, how the question of access to the
technology is handled has the potential to facilitate acceptance
or to alienate very large factions of the population.
From Foresight Update 32, originally
published 15 March 1998.
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