The National Science Foundation
is making a big push to improve the nation’s nanotechnology research,
establishing a network that will link together 13 of the country’s leading
research facilities. The National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (www.nnin.org ), announced late last year, will
help the universities continue pushing forward with research, potentially
developing concepts and technology that can be commercialized.
Many companies are already in the process of pushing collegiate research
programs into production. “The resulting research will be valuable to the
country and to companies like NanoSys that commercialize technology developed in
university labs,” said Stephen Empedocles, director of business development at
NanoSys Inc. of Palo Alto, CA (www.nanosysinc.com/technology.html
). NanoSys develops materials and manufacturing processes that it will license
or sell to larger OEMs so they can gain the benefits of various nanotechnologies
without making big investments in this fledgling field.
Cornell University is the administrator for NINN. Other members include the
University of Michigan, Harvard University, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Penn State, University of Minnesota, University of New Mexico, and Stanford
University.
Professors and grad students will perform many tasks such as characterizing
materials, developing new research and manufacturing tools, and devising
manufacturing processes. There will also be a strong emphasis on improving
educational materials. That thrust will include the creation of training
programs for tools, processing, and synthesis techniques. Understanding the
social and ethical concerns will also be a big part of the program, a Cornell
spokesman says.
All the universities have strong nanotechnology departments that are already
being funded by state governments, which will make the NSF investment more
effective, an NSF spokesman says. The creation of a network is only one part of
the U.S. effort to remain in the forefront of this new field. President Bush
recently signed a bill that allocates $3.7 billion to nanotechnology programs
from 2005 to 2008 (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/technology/nano2.html ).
Proponents feel that huge sum will help spark a takeoff in the field. “The $3.7
billion is more than what the government committed to the human genome project
that fostered the biotech revolution,” Empedocles said.
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The playable nanoguitar fabricated by
researchers at Cornell University, administrator for NNIN, demonstrates
the precision of nanotechnology processing. The strings are 150 by 200
nanometers across and range from 6 to 12 micrometers in length. The entire
guitar is the size of a red blood
cell.
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