Powerpoint for Nano technology

38C E N . AC S .O R G S E P T E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 3

H OW C H E M I ST RY C H A N G E D T H E WO R L D

Most scientists working in the field, when asked to
define nanotechnology, will inevitably turn to the defi-
nition given by the National Nanotechnology Initiative
(NNI), a program that coordinates federal nanotech
research and development. According to NNI, “Nano-

technology is sci-
ence, engineering,
and technology
conducted at the
nanoscale, which is
about 1 to 100 nano-
meters.” Research-
ers concede that’s

a pretty broad definition, opening the door to anyone
from medical scientists to materials scientists to call
what they do nanotechnology.

It wasn’t always this way. Initially, nanotechnology
had a more specific meaning. Credit for inventing the

NANOSCALE�
This scanning
tunneling
microscope
image is made of
carbon monoxide
molecules on a
copper surface.
The space
between the two
arrows is almost
exactly 1 nm.

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Whether nanotechnology will fulfill its promise and transform the world
remains to be seen, but scientists have ambitious plans for the field

BETHANY HALFORD, C&EN BOSTON

Small Science,

B I G F U T U R E

HARD-CORE PORNOGRAPHY AND NANOTECHNOLOGY don’t have much in common. But when it comes to defining what nanotechnology is, the late Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart’s words on the former, “I know it when I see it,” seem
to resonate with researchers searching for a description of the latter.

40C E N . AC S .O R G S E P T E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 3

N A N OT EC H N O LO GY

described as nanotechnology. “What I
had in mind in my initial publication were
nanosystems analogous to what we see in
electronics today but with an emphasis on
nanoscale devices that could provide ways
of making materials and new structures by
guiding the motion of molecules,” he

says.

BUT THE TERM nanotechnology
quickly became problematic, Drexler notes
in “Nanotechnology: From Feynman to
Funding” (Bull. Sci. Technol. Soc. 2004, DOI:
10.1177/0270467604263113). Drexler writes
that he “chose a word with roots that let
it fit any nanoscale technology no matter
how old or mundane.” Scientists, he adds,
were consequently tempted to relabel their
nanoscale research as nanotechnology.
“During the 1990s it was sort of a running
joke,” Drexler tells C&EN. “You’d talk
about some area of research as ‘new and
improved—now with atoms.’ ”

And so Drexler’s vision of nanotechnol-
ogy gave way to the broad field of nanoscale
science and technology that today could
be summed up as this: Size matters when it
comes to matter.

“The general idea that everything when
miniaturized is new is an incredibly power-
ful concept,” says Chad A. Mirkin, director
of the International Institute for Nanotech-
nology at Northwestern University and a
professor at the school. “If you take any bulk
material and you shrink it down to a sub-
100-nm-length scale, then you will have a
material with new properties—new chemi-
cal properties and new physical properties.”

The ability to visualize matter on that
scale has helped nanotechnology blossom
into the field we know today. It’s worth
noting that Drexler’s 1986 publication
of “Engines of Creation,” which brought
nanotechnology into the scientific lexicon,
coincided with the invention of advanced
microscopy tools, such as the scanning
tunneling microscope (invented by IBM
researchers Gerd K. Binnig and Heinrich
Rohrer in 1981) and the atomic force mi-
croscope (also invented by Binnig, along
with Calvin Quate and Christoph Gerber
in 1986).

These instruments gave scientists the
opportunity to peer at atoms, molecules,
and larger structures in a way that was
previously impossible, says Paul S. Weiss,
director of the California NanoSystems In-
stitute and a professor at the University of
California, Los Angeles. “Starting with the
scanning probe microscopes, our underly-
ing thinking changed,” he says. “Now that

word commonly goes to the late Japanese
scientist Norio Taniguchi, of Tokyo Uni-
versity of Science. Taniguchi used it in the
title of his talk, “On the Basic Concept of
‘Nano-Technology,’ ” at a 1974 engineering
conference, where he was speaking about
semiconductor processing. Taniguchi’s
hyphen has long been forgotten.

But a more likely source for populariza-

tion of the word is K. Eric Drexler, now a
visiting scholar with the Oxford Martin
Programme on the Impacts of Future Tech-
nology at Oxford University. Drexler used
the term in the subheading of his 1986 book
“Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of
Nanotechnology.”

Back then Drexler wasn’t talking about
the broad research landscape we now see

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41C E N . AC S .O R G S E P T E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 3

9 0 Y E A R S O F C & E N : N A N OT EC H N O LO GY

we look at the nanoscale world in a new
way, opportunities are presenting them-
selves. We can control the chemical, physi-
cal, and biological properties of materials
with extraordinary precision.”

“Nanotechnology is 50% chemistry and
50% instrumentation,” Mirkin adds. “You
have to be able to see what you make, and
you have to be able to manipulate what you
make to fully understand it and exploit it.”

IN TERMS OF applications, nano-
technology has provided the world with
better cell phones, more durable tennis
balls, longer-lasting rechargeable batter-
ies, improved medical diagnostics, and
smell-fighting socks, to name a few. The
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars maintains an inventory of
consumer products that are enhanced or
enabled by nanotechnology. It currently
includes more than 1,300 items.

Even so, the world is still waiting for
nanotechnology to fulfill its initial promise.
“People were all expecting killer applica-
tions: big new things, fancy devices, big
discoveries that relate to health care. That
really hasn’t happened,” says Jillian M.
Buriak, a chemistry professor specializing in
nanoscale materials at the University of Al-
berta. “A lot of that hype came out of simply
trying to sell nanotechnology to the public.”

“One of my favorite alternate defini-
tions of nanotechnology, which comes
from one of our clients, is: ‘Nanotechnol-
ogy is a word you attach to things to at-
tract funding,’ ” quips Michael Holman,
research director at the consulting firm
Lux Research.

On a more serious note, Hol-
man says that for compa-
nies, nanotechnology
has lost much of its
mystery in the past
decade or so. Back
when Lux started
up in 2004, he
says, “Clients
wondered, ‘What
is nanotechnol-
ogy? And how is it
going to affect my
business?’ Since then
they’ve understood that
nanotechnology is really a
broad term for a lot of different
technologies that are going to affect a lot
of industries and a lot of products in a lot
of different ways,” Holman says. “If a com-

pany is doing cutting-edge science in a lot of
areas, then almost inevitably they’re doing
some nanotechnology.”

“The field has evolved painfully slowly
and incredibly fast,” says Andreas Heinrich,
group leader of scanning probe microscopy
at IBM, in Almaden, Calif. It’s been pain-
fully slow, he says, because the field hasn’t
lived up to its hype. But from a scientific

point of view, nanotechnology’s
evolution has moved quickly

to foster collaboration be-
tween scientists in different

disciplines. “Breaking
down those discipline

boundaries is probably
the most important
thing that nanotech-
nology or nanoscience

has achieved in the sci-
entific world,” Heinrich

says.

Buriak agrees. “The effect of nanotech-
nology on science, I think, has actually
been far more profound than just a few
fancy gadgets and a few isolated break-
throughs,” she says. “What nanoscience
has done is that it has brought people from
all different areas, which previously were
very isolated and separated from each
other, together. That’s where the most
interesting science is, and that’s where the
hardest problems are, at the interfaces be-
tween traditional disciplines. That’s where
you really tackle the big problems that can
have a real impact.”

“One could see a correlation between
the rise of nanotechnology and the dramat-
ically different way we teach chemistry,”
says James M. Tour, an organic chemistry
professor working in nanotechnology at
Rice University. “When I got my degree
30 years ago, we worked in one specific
area, and we never collaborated with an-
other group,” he says. Now students pursue
a broader range of subjects and techniques.
And Tour says he’s just as likely to see stu-
dents trained in engineering or materials
science apply as postdocs in his lab as he is
to see organic chemists do so.

DESPITE THE TALK of nanotech-
nology spurring multidisciplinary research,
not all scientists have rushed into the fold,
and the science of small things has faced
the inevitable backlash. The hype sur-
rounding nanotechnology has naturally
led to some cynicism among scientists, but
there has also been opposition from those
outside the scientific community.

On the silly end of the spectrum, in 2005
a group known as Topless Humans Orga-
nized for Natural Genetics, or THONG,
engaged in a near-naked protest outside of
an Eddie Bauer store in Chicago. Their goal
was to bring attention to nanotechnology,
which they described as a radical and un-
predictable new technology, specifically as
it related to Eddie Bauer’s stain-resistant
clothing made with specially coated fabric
from Nano-Tex.

More alarming, in 2011 three so-called
ecoterrorists in Europe, from a group call-
ing itself the “ELF Switzerland Earth Lib-
eration Front,” were caught trying to bomb
an IBM nanotechnology facility in Swit-
zerland while it was under construction.
That same year, a group in Mexico, known
as Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje,

NANOMAGNE�T� A ferrofluid, made up of
nanoscale ferromagnetic particles, erupts
into spikes in the presence of a magnetic
field. Ferrofluids have applications in
electronics, such as seals for high-speed
computer disc drives.

ANT�ICANCE�R AGE�NT� An artist’s
depiction of the cancer-fighting

nanoparticle Bind-014. The particle
is built from a copolymer (gray) with

targeting ligands on its surface (blue) and
the chemotherapeutic agent docetaxel
(red) encapsulated at its core.

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Watch the world’s smallest movie, made using a scanning
tunneling microscope, at http://cenm.ag/90nano.VIDEO ONLINE

42C E N . AC S .O R G S E P T E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 3

N A N OT EC H N O LO GY

or, roughly translated, Individuals Tending
to Savagery, sent letter bombs to nanotech-
nology researchers in that country. Several
people were injured in the attacks.

The ecoterrorist fringe and the nano-
scientists do have one thing in common:
Both see big things happening with the
small science of nanotechnology. The for-
mer fear environmental disaster and sci-fi
scenarios, such as nanobots run amok. The
latter say that major advances in health
care, materials, and energy made possible
with nanotechnology are here already or on
the horizon.

“Ultimately, nanotechnology will be
something that encompasses a large part
of our world,” says Paula T. Hammond, an
engineering professor specializing in nano-
technology at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Nanotechnology, she says, will
be ubiquitous—in the same way that com-
puters or plastics have touched our lives,
nanotechnology will transform the way we
do things.

“I think we’re still at a very rudimentary
place right now,” adds Joseph M. DeSim-
one, a nanotechnology expert at the Uni-
versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and
North Carolina State University. “If you
look at developments from the early days
of nanotechnology, you might think they’re
not really enduring. But I think you see a
new wave coming, where engineering has
infused itself into nanotechnology. With
engineering comes control and the ability to
manufacture and fabricate. With that, you
are really going to change people’s lives.” ◾

From C&E�N Archives

C&EN has served up a steady diet of nanotechnology-
related research fare over the past two decades. But the
piece that helped the magazine make its mark in the nano-
technology arena is the 2003 Point-Counterpoint debate
between K. Eric Drexler and the late Richard E. Smalley, a

professor at Rice University and a Nobel Laureate in chemistry (C&EN, Dec. 1, 2003,
page 37). In the piece, two nanotech advocates square off about molecular assem-
blers—devices capable of precisely positioning atoms and molecules.

Scientists tend to be
circumspect, even when
speaking on topics about
which they hold strong
opinions. That was not the
case in the Drexler-Small-
ey debate. Their exchange
includes memorable
zingers, such as, “Your
misdirected arguments
have needlessly confused
public discussion of genu-
ine long-term security
concerns. If you value the
accuracy of information
used in decisions of im-
portance to national and
global security, I urge you
to seek some way to help
set the record straight,”
from Drexler to Smalley.
And, “I see you have now
walked out of the room
where I had led you to talk

about real chemistry, and
you are now back in your
mechanical world. I am
sorry we have ended up
like this. For a moment I
thought we were making
progress,” from Smalley
back to Drexler.

Looking back on the
Point-Counterpoint ar-
ticle 10 years on, Drexler
says the exchange was
valuable. “It provided an
opportunity to push back
on some of the miscon-
ceptions that had been in
circulation, which I think
ultimately come from pop-
ular culture and science
fiction,” he tells C&EN.

“It’s part of a growth
process for any field—to
have some ideas that are
maybe a little off the edge

and then to have a debate
about what’s really going
on,” says A. Paul Alivisatos,
director of the Lawrence
Berkeley National Labo-
ratory and a nanotech-
nology specialist at the
University of California,
Berkeley. Over time, he
says, science shows what
is possible and what is
fiction.

Paula T. Hammond, a
nanotechnology expert
at Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, says
the debate helped spark
excitement among the
public about the science.
“Without the public’s ex-
citement we would not be
able to fund the incredible
things that are happening
now in the field,” she says.