By Carl Weiss
Everyone is always looking
for the “Next BIG Thing.” That’s a
given. But what most people don’t
realize is one of the biggest things of all could soon have its origin in the
very small. What I’m talking about is
the rapidly rising realm of nanotechnology.
While the term has been around for a few decades, the emergence of Nanotech
onto the world stage has, to date been more of a whimper than a bang. Well, all that is set to change soon as the
very tiny makes a quantum leap onto the world stage that could have a bigger
impact on your world than the birth of the microcomputer.
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| Image courtesy of pt.wikipedia.org |
The funny thing is, nanotechnology
has been around almost as long as the personal computer. The first microcomputers made their presence
known in the mid to late 1970’s.
Nanotech arrived in 1985 with the discovery of Fullerenes, otherwise
known as Bucky Balls. These microscopic
structures, similar in structure to graphite, are composed of carbon atoms that
can take on the shape of a sphere where they are called Buckminsterfullerenes,
or a cylinder, otherwise known as a carbon nanotube. While their structure seems familiar, one has
to realize that in order to see them, the use of a scanning electron microscope
needs to be employed. While fullerenes
do occur in nature and even in the vacuum of outer space, it is the potential
uses of this super light, super strong material that spawned the Nanotech
revolution.
There’s Plenty
of Room at the Bottom
As early as 1959, when
physicist Richard Feynman postulated that it might soon be possible to
manipulate individual atoms to create unique structures at the microscopic
level, it wasn’t until K. Eric Drexler’s 1986 book, “Engines of Creation,” that
Dr. Feynman’s dream of a billion tiny factories finally began to take
shape. The shape of Nanotech innovation
in the 1980’s was relegated to two researchers by the name of Don Eigler and
Erhard Schweizer, both of whom worked at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, who
arranged 35 xenon atoms to spell out the IBM logo. While an interesting parlor
trick, the technique was nonetheless the harbinger of more exotic constructions
at the molecular level.
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| Image from commons.wikimedia.org |
The 1990’s saw the
application of nanotechnology in everything from electronics and
pharmaceuticals, to textiles and communications. Still to the world at large, Nanotech was not
exactly a household word. Let’s be
honest, when Moungi Bawendi at MIT devised a method for controlled synthesis of
nanocrystals, otherwise known as quantum dots, he had hardly achieved the kind
of rock star status that Steve Jobs and Woz did when they introduced the Apple
II. Still, Bawendi and other
researcher’s progress did not go entirely unnoticed. Slow but steady progress was being made in
molecular manipulation. New
technologies, such as nanolithography were developed by 1999 that allowed the
writing of electronic circuits and the manufacturing of biomaterials used in
biological research.
The Presidents Pile On
In 2000, Bill Clinton gave a
speech at Cal Tech where mentioned the infant Nanotech industry. "Some of our research
goals may take twenty or more years to achieve, but that is precisely why there
is an important role for the federal government."
During the same speech,
President Clinton also announced the founding of the National Nanotechnology
Initiative (NNI), during which he pledged $500 million in government
funding. When George Bush took the helm
as Commander in Chief, he signed into law the 21st Century
Nanotechnology research and Development Act, that increased the government’s
commitment to this initiative by pledging an additional $3.63 billion over 4
years.
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| Image courtesy of flickr.com |
No sooner had President Obama
taken office, when he was introduced to nanotechnology in a big way when a
nanotechnology researcher at the University of Michigan decided to immortalize
the President by etching microscopic copies of Barack Obama’s likeness on a
metal substrate, which went viral when the “Nanobama’s” were published
online. Nanobama’s notwithstanding, the
President has continued to fund NNI to the tune of $1.5 billion in 2015. (See
the video at http://www.azonano.com/nanotechnology-video-details.aspx?VidID=270)
Where’s the Nano-Beef?
While some new uses of Nanotech
saw the light of day during the first 10 years of the new millennium, including
the introduction of passive nanoparticles in disinfectants and sunscreen,
clothing and cosmetics, the promise of nanomachines far outstripped their
reality, causing some pundits such as David
Berube to wonder what all the Nano-Hype was all about.
According to Wikipedia, “His study concludes that much of what is sold as “nanotechnology” is
in fact a recasting of straightforward materials science, which is leading to a
“nanotech industry built solely on selling nanotubes, nanowires, and the like”
which will “end up with a few suppliers selling low margin products in huge
volumes." Further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement
of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies branded
with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the
most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular
manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. According to
Berube, there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is
forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to
garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of
more ambitious and far-sighted work.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nanotechnology
Up until the past few years,
the naysayers had a point. While more
effective sunscreen had its place, where were the self-replicating nanobots
that everyone had long awaited? What
happened to Eric Drexler and Richard Feynman’s “Engines of Creation” that could
turn out nanites by the billions? Where
was the Nano-Beef?
In order for micromachines to
become a reality, they needed to not only be produced, but mass produced. Since it is impossible to shrink factory
workers to scale, that meant that humans had to learn something that nature has
been doing on this planet for billions of years: Self-replication. It wasn’t until 2010, that researchers were
able to manipulate individual atoms and even combine them to form structures,
to date, they were unable to cause their micromachines to replicate. Then in early 2010, geneticist J. Craig
Ventner, managed to create the world’s first biological organism from scratch,
when he constructed a bacterium using off-the-shelf chemicals.
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| Courtesy en.wikipedia.org |
While whipping up a batch of
bacteria might not seem like an earth shattering accomplishment, bear in mind
that this was the first time in 4 billion years that anyone on the planet had
managed to create a living creature that was not only viable, but able to
reproduce. Armed with this knowledge, it
wasn’t long before other researchers applied the discovery to their own work.
Below are a couple of videos
that point out some of the latest advances in nanotechnology:
Whether
you realize it or not, there are already a number of products on the market
that contain Nanotech elements, such as:
Artificial Atoms (Quantum Dots)
The
next few years will see these tiny things becoming bigger and bigger players,
as the world as we know it is literally transformed from the inside out. If you’d like to learn more about the coming Nanotech
revolution, check out this week’s Working the Web to Win radio show, where we
will explore how something very small will soon be very BIG.
Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio
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