From Forbes.com:
forbes.com
The Science of Small
Jonathan Fahey, Forbes Magazine, 02.05.01
James Von Ehr loves acorns. What the rest of the world sees as squirrel chow,
Von Ehr sees as a perfect woodmaking machine, with the necessary energy
supply, tools and complete instructions wrapped in a small package. If nature can
make these machines, Von Ehr reasons, man can at least come close. And if
there's a buck to be made in it, humans will eventually figure out a way. That time,
he believes, is near.
So near that Von Ehr, a 50-year-old software minimogul, has spent $14 million of
his $200 million fortune funding Zyvex of Richardson, Tex. Von Ehr hopes to be the
first entrepreneur to start selling submicroscopic robots that can fabricate from any
combination of molecules a limitless array of superior materials—maybe even
hardwood.
"We have the ability to eliminate the material scarcity that has driven mankind. But
we have to build a brand-new industry from ground zero," says Von Ehr, who sold
his software firm, Altsys, to Macromedia for $112 million in stock in 1995.
The nebulous field of nanotechnology, freighted with as much hype as legitimate
promise, boils down to the process of manipulating matter on a molecular scale (a
nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, about the width of ten hydrogen atoms).
Scientists foresee a day when they can churn out virus-size computers,
cancer-munching robots swimming through arteries and desktop factories
assembling watches out of dust.
Nanotechnology has lured the likes of IBM, Motorola and Dow Chemical, as well as
new entrants like Zyvex, to the pursuit of efficient, miniature materials. Last year
Hewlett-Packard, along with a team of scientists from UCLA, proved the ability to
make a switch that could be turned off and on, like a transistor, out of a single
organic molecule called a catenane. This year they intend to test a 16-bit circuit
smaller than a virus. It is conceivable that organic circuits will someday overtake
silicon in the race to electronic miniaturization.
"Because of nanotechnology, we'll see more changes in the next 30 years than we
saw in all of the last century," says Mihail Roco, the nanotechnology adviser to the
White House. The federal government has created a $422 million fund for public
sector nanoresearch.
Zyvex, billing itself as the first molecular nanotechnology company, is aiming for
nanoproducts that are at least ten years from realization, if they are even possible.
Von Ehr started up in 1997, buying ten powerful microscopes—one for
$350,000—and building a chemistry lab, machine shop and clean room in a
20,000-square-foot factory that hasn't shaken its new-car smell. Zyvex grew from
15 people in 1999 to 29 last year, and Von Ehr plans to double in size annually for
the next several years.
What started out as a plan to spend $2 million to $3 million a year for ten years has
evolved into an ambitious effort to raise and spend $300 million over eight years.
Late last year he brought in two veteran Texas Instruments managers to focus
efforts on nearer-term products, such as microelectronic machine parts maybe
several thousand nanometers across, to bring in some research money.
Von Ehr is already frustrated with the pace of progress in his search. In one room
chemists are fabricating a range of organic molecules they hope will function as
mechanical components. The scientists across the hall are fiddling obsessively with
the Volkswagen-size microscopes to see how the molecules work together, and
testing their strength and stability. The staff has yet to produce any splashy
discoveries.
Just customizing research tools at Zyvex can take a high-tech eternity. A year and
a half ago Zyvex scientists used a microscope to pick a silicon atom off a silicon
wafer, a feat in and of itself. But, realizing they needed better manipulators in the
microscope, they put the atom down and spent 15 months redesigning the
machine's vacuum chamber. Zyvex turned out thousands of parts for the tool, and
the chamber had to be sent away for retrofitting. Soon the physicists will be able to
work freely with the dendrimers—or burr-like molecules—cooked up by Zyvex's
chemists.
While Zyvex's whitecoats tinker away, tangible products from nanotech research
are already around us. IBM squeezes 20 gigabytes of data per square inch onto
tiny disks readable only by heads made of magnetic films a few nanometers thick.
Toyota has combined polypropylene and rubber at the nanometer scale to make a
bumper that is as rigid as the usual 4-millimeter bumper but almost 60% thinner.
The only publicly traded nanotech pure play with measurable sales is Romeoville,
Ill.-based Nanophase Technologies (Nasdaq: NANX), which probably lost more than
$4 million on $4.2 million in sales last year. Its initial successes are in some rather
mundane products, including zinc oxide, the white goopy sunblock that looks
attractive only on a lifeguard's nose.
The traditional method for making zinc oxide is to grind it into crystals about 200
nanometers wide. Nanophase can make them 50 nanometers wide, which renders
the zinc oxide transparent—no more white goop—since each crystalline particle is
small enough to allow harmless light to pass through. Sunburn-causing ultraviolet
light, with its shorter wavelengths, bounces off the particles and never makes it to
the skin.
Nanophase produces these particles by first vaporizing zinc rods in a 3,000-degree
plasma arc reactor, essentially a giant blowtorch. Clusters of zinc atoms then mix
with a reactive gas, usually oxygen, and cool into a solid. Nine hundred million of
these zinc oxide crystals could be spread across the head of a pin in a single layer.
The company shipped 250 tons of zinc oxide powder last year; customers include
BASF (for use in sunblocks) and Dr. Scholl's (for use as an antifungal agent in foot
powder). "We're not going to spend shareholders' money trying to make nanobots
and fuel cells," says Chief Executive Joseph Cross.
Markets are opening everywhere. Nanophase's tiny aluminum oxide molecules fit so
tightly together that they're making vinyl flooring up to five times more
scratch-resistant than the regular version. The Navy uses Nanophase's aluminum
and titanium oxides to recondition worn steering mechanisms in submarines. With
less wear and no barnacle growth on the bow planes used to steer, the Navy
expects to save $100 million a year once fully implemented.
Nanometer-size materials occur all around us in nature, but it was only 20 years
ago, thanks to IBM's introduction of the scanning tunneling microscope, that
scientists began to observe and manipulate materials at the atomic level. The blue
pigment Mayans used to paint temple walls 1,400 years ago was made of particles
only about 50 nanometers across. They fit so tightly together they are nearly
impervious to rain and sun, outlasting all other colors.
Zyvex's Von Ehr is prepared to work another 20 years to perfect his first
self-replicating nano-construction workers. "Having a lot of money,"he says, "has
allowed me to do something bigger than Icould have otherwise."
Or much, much smaller. |
