Jim...
An interesting story on the potential of nanotechnology in today's Boston Globe. There is one reference to ADI right at the beginning. Sounds like an interesting technology and one that ADI hopefully will profit from.
Cheers
Bob T.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Immense potential lies in amazingly small things
By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff, 6/9/2003
AMBRIDGE -- Here, in a clean room filled with powerful computers, powerful microscopes, and million-dollar machines, Analog Devices Inc. makes the sensors that tell automobile air bags when to inflate, and just as important, when not to. Among the key components: a mechanical device, similar to a fence swinging on a hinge, that is 10 times smaller than a human hair and protected by a synthetic film about a thousand times thinner than that. Analog churns out these sensors at the rate of about 1 million a week, squeezing as many as 7,000 on a silicon wafer the size of a compact disc, and selling them not only to auto manufacturers, but makers of medical instruments, measuring devices, and handheld video games. Since introducing the sensor -- which combines mechanical parts with a computer chip -- Analog has dramatically reduced its size. What fit in the palm of a hand a decade ago now fits at the end of a finger tip. And they should only get smaller.
''Pretty soon, they're going to fit under our fingernail,'' said Rob O'Reilly, an Analog test engineer, ''and we won't be able to find them.''
Analog's sensor is just one example of the commercial application of two related technologies that are producing big things by getting small: micro-electronic mechanical systems, or MEMS, which builds at the micron level, or millionths of a meter, and nanotechnology, which works with materials measured in the billionths of a meter, or nanometers. Together, these emerging sectors are known as ''tiny technology.'' Many engineers, futurists, and technologists believe it could become the type of transformational technology -- like the Internet -- that leads to broad commercial and social changes.
Massachusetts, with its concentration of renowned research institutions, appears well positioned to tap the potential of nanotechnology. Since 2000, the state has received more nanotechnology funding from the National Science Foundation than any other. Among universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranks first in NSF nanotechnology funding, while Harvard University ranks third.
Meanwhile, a consortium of Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and the University of New Hampshire, is among the finalists for one of two new national research centers, proposing to develop manufacturing techniques for nanotechnology products.
Nanotechnology, which involves the manipulation of atoms and molecules to create new materials and machines invisible to the naked eye, has applications for a broad array of industries, from plastics to electronics to medicine. Already, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs are suggesting products such as ''smart'' pills, tiny computerized drug delivery systems that are implanted under the skin and dole out precise doses of medicine at the right time; tiny generators that would last 20 times longer than batteries and could be refueled instead of thrown out; and microchemical processors to make small amounts of chemicals on site and avoid the costs and hazards of storing and shipping toxic materials.
At MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, to which the Army has committed $50 million, scientists and engineers are employing nanotechnology to develop ''smart'' uniforms. Creating incredibly small structures of polymers, semiconductors, and other materials, researchers are looking to embed tiny sensors into the threads of fabrics so uniforms could detect chemical or biological attacks. Another project aims to use magnetic nanoparticles and fluids to create lightweight uniforms that automatically stiffen into a bullet-proof material when attacks are detected.
While applications like this might make tiny technologies sound like science fiction, they are already being used to create real world products. Analog, for instance, uses MEMS, a photo-lithographic process similar to that employed in making computer chips, to build the mechanical parts of its sensors, and nanotechology, which uses heat and pressure to arrange molecules, to make the super-thin film that prevents the moving parts from sticking together.
Other Massachusetts companies also are putting nanotechnology to work. Zymark Corp. of Hopkinton has developed a system that allows biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to measure, dispense, and monitor compounds by the nanoliter -- an amount that is essentially invisible. That allows companies to run many more tests at lower cost, which improves the chances of discovering new drugs. From the amount of material that was needed to run one test in a test tube, the Zymark system can run millions, said the company president, Kevin Hrusovsky.
In Taunton, Kopin Corp. is now in its third generation of tiny technology products. The company, founded in the 1980s, brought out its first product for consumer applications in 1996: a 50-nanometer transistor that is used in one in four cellphones. It followed with flat-screen displays, the size of a fingernail, that are used in camcorders. And last year, Kopin introduced a new semiconductor chip, known as a light-emitting diode, that is the smaller than a grain of sand but can emit near blinding light with low amounts of power.
This type of lighting, known as solid state or digital lighting, could become a $50 billion worldwide market and cut global electricity consumption in half by 2025, according to the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association.
Such products are only beginning to tap the potential of nanotechnology. In much of the 20th century, Martin Schmidt, director of MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, noted recently, engineering seemed driven to make things bigger: bigger buildings, bigger airplanes, bigger bridges. But now, at the beginning of the 21st century, he said, ''a lot of the excitement is about making increasingly small things.''
Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 6/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. |
