Nanotechnology — Small Things for Big Changes – Law creates office, gives $3.7 billion over next 4 years – Oregon Hopes ride on nanotechnology

The next Big Thing is very small. Exactly one-billionth of a Thing.

By:
James Flanigan
Los Angeles Times in NASVF.org

That is a nano, and nanotechnology is the thing you’ll being hearing a lot about in coming years. The science of working at atomic dimensions to engineer materials and machines out of individual molecules will transform industry and medicine.

In time — and not too much time — nanotechnology "will produce batteries that allow your laptop computer or cellphone to go for weeks, not hours, without recharging," says Jeffrey DePinto, business development manager for Air Products & Chemicals Inc., which invests in nanotech venture capital funds to gain access to new technology for its industrial gas and chemicals business.

Eli Yablonovitch, a director of UCLA’s center of the California NanoSystems Institute, has an even more futuristic prediction: "Nanotechnology will produce cellphones with the power to automatically translate conversations in several languages."

California’s programs are mirrored at universities in other states and are part of a multibillion-dollar U.S. effort. Just last week, Congress passed the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, authorizing $3.7 billion in nano research and development spending over the next four years. As it is, there are 104 research institutes in this country devoted to nanotechnology, according to Cientifica Inc., a European consulting firm.

Private industry is not standing back. Major companies in many industries — Boeing Co. in aerospace, Germany’s Bayer in chemicals, Japan’s Canon Inc. in office equipment — are backing U.S.-based venture funds to promote small companies here and abroad that are coming up with innovations. But the U.S. leads the world in commercial nanotechnolgy, with 430 infant companies working in the field.

The efforts of a few of them reflect the scope of possibilities.

Imago Scientific Instruments Corp. in Madison, Wis., has developed a microscope that works at nano levels — displaying spaces just five atoms apart on a wafer of silicon. Imago, which is backed by California venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is getting $2 million apiece for its microscopes, underscoring the need of the electronics industry to figure out how to etch ever more finely imprinted circuits on microchips.

Optiva Inc. of South San Francisco has developed a way to coat liquid crystal displays for flat-screen television sets or computer monitors that cuts several steps out of the old process of laminating such screens. That means major cost reductions in production of all sorts of products, potentially allowing developed economies like the U.S., Japan and Europe to retain their manufacturing bases.

"This is real industry, not a dot-com phenomenon," says Peter Grubstein, managing partner of Ngen Partners, a Santa Barbara-based venture firm that is backing Optiva and many other nanotech-related start-ups. The outlook for such small firms is that they will be acquired by larger firms, their technological skills augmenting a big company’s capabilities.

At this point, the future of nanotechnology seems limitless. Its convergence with biotechnology is clear in such small concerns as Zyvex Corp. of Richardson, Texas, which encapsulate hormones, to Sensicore Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., which has perfected a laboratory on a chip to constantly monitor water supplies for minute amounts of impurities — a useful application to combat terrorism as well as certify drinking water.

The landmark discovery that sparked current enthusiasm for nanotechnology occurred only a few years ago at Rice University in Houston, when Nobel Prize-winner Richard Smalley and his colleagues developed carbon nanotube material, which is thinner than a human hair but bulletproof and so tough yet light that it could replace steel in car fenders or fabric in soldiers’ uniforms. What’s more, it has extraordinary electrical conductivity — so communications circuits could be built right into a pair of desert fatigues.

In the next decade, nanotechnologists probably will discover how to make molecules replicate themselves, "as cells do now in the body," says Yablonovitch of the California NanoSystems Institute, a $350-million research program shared by UCLA and UC Santa Barbara and funded by the federal and state governments and private industry.

That would mean machines could build themselves. That vision has given rise to horror fiction such as Michael Crichton’s book "Prey," in which nanoparticles swarm and take over human beings before everything is blown up in a gotterdammerung ending.

But here’s another vision: Tennis balls that won’t lose their bounce, lightbulbs that never burn out and cars that run for years on a single charge.

It is, as Menlo Park scientist-lawyer Albert Halluin says: "Nanotechnology is likely to affect every aspect of our lives."

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Nanotech wrapped in federal support
Law creates office, gives $3.7 billion over next 4 years

In what some call the biggest commitment to technology research in 40 years, President Bush is expected next week to sign a law establishing a federal office for nanotechnology.

By:
Jon Van
Chicago Tribune

"This is a fair equivalent to the earliest days when NASA was created," said F. Mark Modzelewski, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a trade group.

Funded with $3.7 billion over the next four years, the office is intended to focus national attention and boost funding for research into studies that deal with manipulating matter an atom or molecule at a time. Technology’s ultimate miniaturization literally changes all aspects of matter, including its strength, durability and conductivity.

Creation of the nano initiative will come on the eve of NanoCommerce 2003, a national meeting to promote nanotech commercialization that opens in Chicago on Dec. 8. Chicago and the Midwest have been early to jump on the nanotech bandwagon with research centers established at Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and Purdue University, among others. Local companies such as Nanophase Technologies Corp., Arryx Inc. and Nanosphere Inc. already have products on the market and more in the pipeline.

Nanotechnology was named a national priority during the Clinton administration. Washington has embraced it as the key to promoting national economic well-being. "Most lawmakers are interested in jobs," said Modzelewski. "They see this as having a huge economic impact."

Because the law puts funding on a four-year cycle rather than a year-to-year basis, it lends the field the stability to attract young people making decisions about education and career, said Vijaya Vasista, chief operating officer of Nanosphere, based in Northbrook.

Nanosphere, which has more than 50 employees, is developing equipment that uses nanoparticles to identify strands of genetic material more quickly and cheaply than is possible using standard technology. It already sells products for use by researchers and hopes within a year to market products for diagnosing illness.

Sean Murdoch, executive director for Chicago-based Atom Works, said when politicians show an interest, it can raise a technology’s profile.

"When Gov. Blagojevich mentioned nanotech in his state-of-the-state speech, I started getting calls from people I’d never heard from before," said Murdoch, whose organization promotes nanotech in Illinois and the Midwest.

Universities have rushed to include nanotechnology in their programs in recent years, said Robert Park, public information director of the American Physical Society and a physics professor at the University of Maryland.

"The country has to make the bet that this is going to be big. Japan, China and Europe are making the bet, so we can’t afford not to."

As an example of how things change on the nano scale, which refers to one-billionth of a meter, Park cited a new form of carbon known as nanotubes.

Fibers made of nanotubes are so strong yet lightweight that some scientists have speculated it might be possible to build an elevator into space using nanotube fibers. "For such minute fibers to have such strength is incredible," Park said.

Nanotech research funding had gotten so large that it needed its own office to coordinate and monitor spending, said Mary Good, a former undersecretary of technology in the U.S. Commerce Department. She now chairs the Alliance for Science & Technology Research in America.

Modzelewski said there are 1,500 nanotech start-ups worldwide including 1,100 in the United States.

An estimated $1 billion of venture capital has been invested in the past three years, and this year’s investment could total as much as $700 million, he said.

The National Science Foundation estimates that in about 10 years the worldwide total revenue associated with nanotech could be a trillion dollars.

"This is real," Modzelewski said. "The only downside to it would be to avoid the hype that we saw with the dot-com bubble. People shouldn’t expect too much too fast. This is something that will be rolling thunder in our economy for a long time, maybe 100 years."

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Oregon Hopes ride on nanotechnology

Oregon may have a good shot at landing some of the $3.7 billion Congress has set aside for research

Oregon’s academic, business and government leaders are gearing up efforts to make the state a much bigger player in the world of small things.

By:
Ted Sickinger
The Oregonian

Congress recently approved the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which would provide $3.7 billion for research and development programs during four years beginning in 2005. President Bush has indicated he will sign the bill.

Oregon researchers think the state stands a good chance of bringing home a significant chunk of federal research money flowing from the nanotechnology bill because one of its chief sponsors was Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

They also think Oregon universities, working collaboratively with local industry and federal laboratories in the region, could capture one of the nationally designated nanotechnology research centers that the bill would establish.

"The bottom line is that over the next decade, we have a goal of attracting $400 million in federal R&D money," said Ron Adams, dean of the college of engineering at Oregon State University. "Our goal is to get a multiyear funded center through the National Science Foundation or the Department of Energy."

Nanotechnology is an embryonic field in which researchers manipulate structures at an atomic level to create new and better-performing materials and products. Many observers see the field as a holy grail of academic research and economic development, an area estimated to have the potential of becoming a $1 trillion-a-year industry by 2015 as scientists commercialize their inventions.

Realistically, experts say, viable nanotechnology businesses and jobs may be many years away in Oregon. Meanwhile, the state’s bid to become a national player in the field faces steep institutional challenges.

The state has trimmed its investing in higher education for years, and it will face tough competition for the new grant money from top-flight schools and well-funded nanotechnology initiatives in Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

Moreover, Oregon schools have never had a particularly entrepreneurial bent or much success in commercializing technologies developed in a university setting — both important factors in garnering the federal money and seeing economic impact from research, experts say.

Yet local backers say the national nanotechnology initiative plays well to Oregon’s strengths in fields such as semiconductors, metrology, imaging, and fluid mechanics.

"We can’t pin our hopes on nanotechnology in the near term," said David Chen, a partner with OVP Venture Partners who has been involved with state efforts to build on the region’s industrial expertise. "No matter how much money you put into research, this is not a near-term fix.

"But this is an extension of what we know. Our regional strengths align with the growth opportunities. . . .We have as many riches in the soil as anywhere else."

While the grants will be competitively awarded after peer review, the fact that Wyden was one of the original sponsors of the nanotechnology legislation can’t hurt.

"Since I was the principal sponsor, I’m well-positioned to help us compete," Wyden said. "I wrote the whole bill to be as Oregon-friendly as I could, recognizing that the competition would be tough."

Moreover, Oregon has a running start on putting its proposals in place. Earlier this year, the Legislature agreed to provide $20 million in bonding to build a collaborative research center investigating multiscale materials and devices at Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. Portland State University researchers also expect to play a role in the effort.

The investment will fund two buildings, one at UO’s Materials Science Institute, where researchers will develop new nanoscale materials, and another at OSU’s Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, where scientists will use those materials to build prototypes of tiny devices such as miniature heating and cooling pumps.

State funding for the centers is an outgrowth of the Oregon Council on Knowledge and Economic Development, a group of academics, legislators and industry leaders charged by former Gov. John Kitzhaber with looking for ways to boost economic development in knowledge-based industries.

What the Legislature failed to provide last session was significant operating support for the center — ongoing funding that would support research as opposed to facilities.

At a meeting of the group last week in Portland, Allen Alley, chairman of the council and chief executive of Tualatin-based Pixelworks, compared the state’s investment to a venture capital fund with the risky strategy of investing in just one enterprise.

"We have to nurture it," Alley said.

The state multiscale materials and devices effort already represents an unprecedented collaboration among Oregon schools to land federal funding in the technology field. The universities also are working with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., one of nine Department of Energy national laboratories and by far the region’s largest recipient of federal research dollars.

The university group has begun submitting collaborative research proposals to federal granting agencies. Last month, a group of UO and OSU professors submitted $15 million in research proposals to the National Science Foundation.

Supporters also hope that industry backers with local ties and considerable research in nanotechnology will prove a persuasive asset in chasing federal money.

The state’s largest technology employers, Intel and Hewlett-Packard, perform some of the most advanced applied research in the nanotechnology field at their campuses in, respectively, Hillsboro and Corvallis. The result is a ready pool of talented researchers and industrial partners eager to commercialize any technology developed — a critical link of the federal push.

Intel is nothing if not an expert in the art of miniaturization. It systematically shrinks the electrical circuits in its computer chips and develops new materials to create better-performing devices. Most research in that process takes place at the company’s Ronler Acres campus 15 miles west of Portland, where the company recently completed construction of the most advanced chip-development factory in the world.

Likewise, Hewlett-Packard is an expert in the science of fluid mechanics employed in the company’s inkjet printers — technology that is principally developed in Corvallis. H-P recently donated a building to house the multiscale materials and devices center while its permanent home is under construction.

Heike Mayer, an assistant professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute who recently graduated from Portland State’s urban studies program, studied the genesis of Oregon’s high-tech sector for her doctoral dissertation and has done some preliminary work on the geography of nanotechnology.

The biggest obstacles facing Oregon, Mayer said, are limits on its academic prowess and on its ability to leverage the expertise of large high-tech companies researching in the field but wanting to keep their findings proprietary.

She also said Oregon needs to maintain a well-coordinated public-private effort to establish its place on the nanotechnology map.

Chen, the venture capitalist, agreed.

"Divided, we have no chance," he said. "United, at least we’ve got a shot."