Colorado urged to think small – Group foresees windfall in molecule-size products

Implantable brain sensors that enable quadriplegics to walk. Khaki pants that repel stains. Bathroom sinks that never need cleaning. Bulletproof vests and "dynamic armor" that can harden or soften as necessary.

By Jennifer Beauprez
Denver Post Business Writer

They’re all products, or potential products, of a tiny new revolution called nanotechnology: Molecular engineering involving material a thousand times smaller than a human hair to create tiny machines, improved fabrics and myriad other new materials.

Scientists who use atoms as building blocks and Tinkertoys dream of dazzling breakthroughs in medicine, supercomputing, energy and environmental cleanup.

The technology is on track to be the largest government-funded science project since the space race of the 1960s.

A new organization doesn’t want Colorado to miss out on the potential bonanza.

The Colorado Nanotechnology Initiative, made up primarily of scientists, is pushing for a statewide nanotechnology laboratory where researchers’ ideas ultimately could create new local companies and jobs.

The group also wants to galvanize the state’s universities to create new curricula that would help churn out young nano experts in Colorado.

A separate, national organization, the NanoBusiness Alliance, attempted to draw more attention to the technology last year when it picked Denver as a nanotech "hub."

But not much seemed to happen, according to some observers. That’s partly because nanotechnology itself is not an industry, but a science that spans many industries from the clothing and auto sectors to biotech and defense.

Enter the scientists. University of Denver physics professor Louis Hornyak fueled the start of the new Colorado group. He did so after becoming frustrated that the state wasn’t part of a nationwide online network that lets scientists collaborate on nano research projects and seek federal funding.

Joining him are two other unpaid nano champions who are organizing monthly events across the state to encourage scientists and universities to work together on research and curricula.

The June 30 forum at Colorado State University in Fort Collins brought together 45 university and business officials.
p> At another gathering Hornyak is helping to promote, the Jefferson County Economic Council will host a nanotechnology business breakfast July 24 at the Denver Marriott West.

One of the big initiatives will be to develop a trained nano workforce in Colorado, Hornyak said.

"We need to get these courses online fast so we can get more people trained and knowledgeable about nanotechnology," Hornyak said.

About 40,000 U.S. scientists are capable of working in nanotechnology today, and as many as 800,000 workers will be needed to support a projected $1 trillion nanotech market by 2015, according to Lux Capital, a New York venture firm that invests only in nanotechnology businesses.

"This is the new technological revolution, and we don’t want to be left behind," said Roop Mahajan, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado who is involved in the organization.

Colorado, however, isn’t necessarily that far behind the curve, according to a survey by Small Times Magazine.

The publication ranked Colorado No. 12 in terms of states’ efforts to become the economic center of small tech.

California topped the list, followed by Massachusetts. New Mexico ranked third. The survey based its results upon research, industry, venture capital, innovation, workforce and costs.

Only a handful of companies and scientists know nanotechnology in Colorado.

In Boulder, Mahajan is creating a tiny microscopic sensor to go on a cardiac stent that, when placed in cardiac patients, could monitor blood flow and potentially detect heart attacks before they start.

Diego Restrepo, a biologist at CU Health Sciences Center, is developing a tiny sensor – the width of five strands of hair – to go inside the brain. The sensor would monitor and redirect misfired neurons, possibly one day helping quadriplegics walk again.

In Golden, Metafluidics, a company that emerged from the Colorado School of Mines, is developing microscopic pumps and pipes to sort and analyze blood cells and potentially identify dangerous diseases and discover new drugs. The pumps are controlled by laser beams.

In Longmont, NanoProducts Corp. makes precision-engineered powders used to produce static-free computer screens, longer-lasting laptop computer batteries and ultraviolet protection in cosmetics.

And ZettaCore Inc. in Denver is manipulating molecules to boost memory chip performance in computers, cellphones and phones. With $8 million from investors, it’s searching for a lab.

Mahajan said he hopes a statewide laboratory could be established to reduce the costs of research for those kinds of projects. The precise instruments and clean rooms can cost tens of millions of dollars.

"We need top-notch, state-of-the- art facilities," Mahajan said. Without them, it will be tough to recruit more nanotechnology scientists, he said.

The state supports the nanotech efforts but likely won’t throw money behind the technology for some time – especially during hard economic times and state budget cuts, said John Hansen, Colorado’s secretary of technology.

"When we’re cutting mental health hospital beds, I would never say let’s fund a nanotechnology lab," Hansen said. "It’s still early in the game. Once it gains a critical mass, we’ll create an office of nanotechnology."

Meanwhile, the race is on elsewhere, as some states make big bets on nanotechnology. New York and IBM contributed $150 million to create a nanotechnology laboratory at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The state now is pushing to attract new nanotech companies to the region.

Texas, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Michigan and other states created initiatives for more collaboration among researchers and businesses.

"It makes sense," said Peter Hebert, managing partner of Lux Capital. "This is going to be a massive industry by 2015, and all these states want to generate the lion’s share of the activity."

So does the rest of the world. Japan boosted its funding to $1 billion for nanotech research this year, up from $700 million last year. The European Union will spend more than $1 billion through 2006.

Canada and the University of Alberta teamed up to put $120 million towards a National Institute for Nanotechnology with hopes of becoming a global leader in the future.

And the United States plans to spend aggressively on nanoresearch despite federal cutbacks elsewhere. In May, Congress passed a bill promising to spend $2.4 billion over the next three years on nano.

The possibilities for nano abound. When materials are broken down at the atomic level, they can create materials with entirely new properties.

Levi’s Dockers and Eddie Bauer now sell khakis that feel like cotton but on an atomic level include a coating that causes dirt, wine or ketchup to bead up and roll right off.

A German company, Nanogate, is creating coatings for ceramics in bathtubs and sinks that keep them from getting dirty.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing dynamic armor, material filled with hollow beads that contain tiny magnetic particles. The beads line up, making them 50 times stiffer than normal when exposed to a magnetic field. Soldiers could activate the vest when they hear gunfire or if already hit by a bullet, to create an instant splint.

Another semiconductor material, quantum dots, is so small it changes color under lights as it grows or shrinks in size. Companies are testing it with hopes of one day using them in medicine to monitor cellular interaction.

"There’s some really exciting work, even where people are creating biological motors," Hebert said. "This is stuff that’s research, and it’s further out there."

Yet it’s the "out there" research that incites some critics of nanotechnology.

Bill Joy, the Aspen-based chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, emerged as the most outspoken critic in 2000. He wrote an essay predicting that if the technologies fall into the wrong hands, the world is "on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil."

Michael Crichton’s recent novel, "Prey," which tells the story of malicious nanotech robots, may play on those fears if the story is made into a movie as expected, Hornyak said.

Most scientists scoff at those robot fears and are starting to focus on more real-world issues instead – like nanotech’s environmental hazards.

No one knows what could happen if nano-sized materials such as iron oxide are absorbed into the human skin or if they are dumped as waste into water, said Vicki Colvin, a professor studying such issues at Rice University in Houston.

Colvin calls her work the "anti-hype" and calls for businesses using nanotech to be more careful than previous industries.

"We don’t want to make the mistakes of charging forward looking only at the positive, because there will almost always be consequences," she said. "The public wants to know what are the benefits and what are the costs."
THE LARGE AND SMALL OF IT

Everyday items, natural and man-made, and their sizes.

Width of human hair

approx. 50 micrometers

Head of a straight pin

1 to 2 millimeters

Bee

approx. 15 millimeters

Butterfly

10 centimeters

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