Phislosphy And Themes In Nanotechnology

Philosophy and Themes in Nanotechnology

Medicine CAT scan

Medicine current state of the art: Detect 109 cancer cells.

What if… Detect minute amounts of cancer cells.

Medicine

What if… Detect minute amounts of foreign material.

Medicine Radiation therapy

Medicine What if… Target only the disease.

Administer a small dosage directly to the disease.

Electronics

Electronics What if…

Transistors which are ~100 to 1000 times smaller than current transistors. VG

source island

drain

Circuits which can build themselves.

Nanotechnology Philosophy Build from the “bottom up”. Fabricate structures atom by atom (or molecule by molecule) with fundamentally new properties and/or functions.

1 nanometer

Length Scales

= one billionth of a meter (10-9 meters)

•Gate length of •Diameter of a human haira transistor ~ 100,000nm ~ 130nm •Protein ~ 50nm

Funding

Over $5 billion worldwide in government funding.

USA Canada

National Nanotechnology Initiative • Laboratories of the NRC “… National Nanotechnology Initiative major players •Other Universities as a top Administration Priority…” Kingdom, Germany, •United National Institute for President’s Committee of Adviser’s on Science and Technology France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Nanotechnology (Alberta) Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan $120million for$1.5 5 years 2005 budget: nearly billion toward nanotechnology

Multidisciplinary Chemistry

Physics

Biology

NANOTECHNOLOGY Engineering

Mathematics

Biological Systems

Molecular Electronics Circuits utilizing molecules.

molecule: tiny resistor and capacitor

molecular transistor

source

molecule

drain

Molecular Electronics sensors Presence of foreign materials affects transport through the device.

source molecule

drain

Molecular Electronics

Biological Systems

Molecular Electronics Devices

Use molecular electronics to study biological systems.

Study Biological Systems Can we monitor DNA transcription?

source

drain

Summary Nanotechnology

Philosophy

Build from the “bottom up”.

Multidisciplinary •Physics •Biology •Chemistry •Mathematics •Engineering