X-Message-Number: 20024 From: "Gina Miller" <> Subject: The Nanogirl News~ Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 01:58:55 -0700 The Nanogirl News September 9, 2002 Intel will unfurl its nanotechnology plans at its developer conference next week, shedding light on what will power its chips for the coming decades. Sunlin Chou, senior vice president of the technology and manufacturing group at Intel, will discuss the company's plans for nanotechnology, or the science of making chips with elements that measure less than 100 nanometers, next Thursday morning at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, California. Current chips have features measuring 130 nanometers on average. (CNet 9/4/02) http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956443.html?tag=cd_mh Law firm finds niche in nanotechnology. Winstead Sechrest & Minick is thinking small in a big way. The Dallas-based law firm has formed a full-service nanotechnology practice that could be the first of its kind in Texas. Winstead Sechrest has experience in filing and prosecuting patent applications, licensing, trademark and commercialization issues involving various areas of science and technology. By formalizing its efforts around nanotechnology, the firm is targeting an area described as one of the emerging technologies likely to revolutionize the 21st century. (Houston Business Journal 8/30/02) http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2002/09/02/story2.html Nanotechnology: The God Of Small Things. Bala Manian's company, Quantum Dot Corporation, hasn't kept its crown jewels in any bank vault. At their facilities in Palo Alto, California, you will find their jewels under a microscope, twinkling luminously like the Nizam's finest. The jewels are called quantum dots, coloured crystals just a few hundred atoms across. Manian's tiny sparklers are about the same size as a protein molecule or a short sequence of DNA. The coloured quantum nanodots could be used to tag different proteins or sequences of DNA-upto 40,000 genes or proteins in as little as 10 minutes. (Hoovers 8/1/02) http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=displaynews&doc_id=NR20020902670.2 _23400021502cd050 Nanotechnology topic of UW forum. The University of Washington will present a forum and workshop on business and nanotechnology later this month. In "Technology Forum: NanoTech Meets Business," researchers at Pacific Northwest Laboratories and UW will discuss nanotech-related advances in materials, health care and the environment. The event takes place Wednesday, Sept. 18. URL to UW workshop included. (DJC.com 9/3/02) http://www.djc.com/news/ht/11136859.html Scientists Develop Atomic-Scale Memory. In 1959, physics icon Richard Feynman, in a characteristic back-of-the-envelope calculation, predicted that all the words written in the history of the world could be contained in a cube of material one two-hundredths of an inch wide - provided those words were written with atoms. Now, a little more than 40 years after Feynman's prescient estimate, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an atomic-scale memory using atoms of silicon in place of the 1s and 0s that computers use to store data. (ScienceDaily Magazine 9/5/02) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/09/020905064741.htm (Company profile) Nantero's Next-Gen Memory Turns to Nanotubes. Their plan is diabolically simple: build a memory chip that will one day obsolete all other technologies placing Nantero at the pinnacle of memory chip design, research and development. There are only a couple of problems, however. There are dozens of companies - including every major semiconductor manufacturer - competing for the same prize and Nantero has yet to produce a working chip. Of course, neither have any of their future competitors. In fact, most companies working in this area are just now moving out of the lab and into the proof-of-concept stage with prototypes ready for evaluation sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. (Nanotech Planet 9/3/02) http://www.nanoelectronicsplanet.com/nanochannels/profiles/article/0,4028,10 500_1456021,00.html Investors bet on hi-tech breakthrough. There has certainly been little to cheer investors lately, but that does not prevent them from looking for the next big thing. Many are now pinning their hopes on nanotechnology - the process of manufacturing tiny machines the size of atoms. But researchers say the real promise of nanotechnology will take years of hard work in the lab. They fear that if it is over-hyped, their work could fall victim to the sort of boom and bust cycle that has hit telecoms and dot.com businesses. It sounds like science fiction, but researchers are predicting:...(BBC 9/5/02) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2234333.stm Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: VECO) today announced that it has established a China Nanotechnology Center facility (CNC) in Beijing, China. The facility will be staffed with local scientists and engineers and equipped with Veeco's latest Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) products and other advanced nanotechnology application modules. The CNC will be jointly operated with the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Day to day operations will be managed by Oliver Yeh, Veeco's newly appointed General Manager for China. The CAS is a national institution for scientific research and promotes original scientific innovation and integration of key technologies. Institutes organized under the CAS auspices perform first-class research and open up new directions of research, in particular in the area of nanometer sciences. (StockHouse Australia news 9/3/02) http://www.stockhouse.com/news/news.asp?tick=VECO&newsid=1276899 Silicon nanoparticles eyed for chemical detection. The latest silicon-based technology developed to thwart terrorists is "smart dust" produced at the University of Calif., San Diego. A research group has developed a method for fabricating porous-silicon nanoparticles that have a selective response to light. The process enables a given chemical to change the reflectivity of a cloud of particles, creating a unique signature that can be detected from a distance. (EETimes 9/9/02) http://www.eetimes.com/at/news/OEG20020909S0082 What Can Nanotech Do for You? While tiny technology, such as minuscule robots that take inventory or scan the bloodstream for signs of disease, never fails to amaze, it also tends to generate skepticism over the extent of its practical applications. But experts say that nanotechnology and, more immediately, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) are already benefiting a range of industries and are poised to deliver significant advances in computing and business. "This has been promised and expected before, but has never materialized," Frost & Sullivan's Technical Insights director of research, Leo O'Connor, told NewsFactor. (Yahoo 9/4/02) http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=75&ncid=75&e=1&u=/nf/200209 04/tc_nf/19278 Nanophotonic composites light up for the future. Scientists from Brown University, US, have made nanocomposite arrays by filling nanopores in anodized aluminium oxide with an organic dye. The composites exhibited a much higher fluorescence yield than conventional films of the dye. (Nanotechweb.org 9/3/02) http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/1/9/2/1 Just Two Words: Carbon Nanotubes. Mass production of these super-strong, super-versatile structures is poised to begin. That means lower prices -- and new opportunities. Plastics were then. Carbon nanotubes are now. Built by arranging carbon atoms in a hexagonal pattern to form stringlike, cylindrical structures, nanotubes are 10,000 times thinner than human hair. They're strong as diamonds, yet withstand bending and twisting better than steel. They can conduct electricity or act as semiconductors. And they are thought to carry heat better than any other material. To exploit these properties, proposed applications include building 22,000-mile ropes to tether satellites to Earth or transistors so tiny that a supercomputer could fit in your pocket. "Nanotubes are astonishingly promising, and I'm a realist, not an optimist," says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor at Northwestern University. "It's a question of making the technology cheap enough." (Business 2.0 Sept. 02, issue) http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,42932,FF.html Nanotechnology may aid environment. For scientists who study it, nanotechnology is considered a clean technology - perhaps even the key to solving some current environmental ills. And the field is advancing rapidly. The National Science Foundation has been cutting its timetable for the release of nanotech-fueled products from five or 10 years to two or three years, said Mihail Roco, NSF's senior adviser on nanotechnology. First products likely to emerge are in medicine, Roco said. Nanotechnology will so thoroughly impact the way science addresses medicine, food, electronics and the environment, that within a decade or so, Roco envisions a $1 trillion yearly market in products that carry nano-components, including all computer chips, half of pharmaceuticals and half of chemical catalysts. (Siliconvalley.com via Ap Wire 9/8/02) http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/4031259.htm Hewlett-Packard researchers will unveil a major breakthrough in the field of nanotechnology on Monday in Europe, a milestone in the company's goal to build future generations of smaller, faster and cheaper chips based on "molecular grids." Molecular grids are the central concept in HP's nanotechnology plans. In HP's vision, layers of molecular strands, laid down in a crisscross fashion like city streets, will form a mesh of tiny, intelligent circuits. This molecular mesh could be sandwiched between layers of ordinary chip wires to act as a communications network or, eventually, used as the foundation for a complete microprocessor. Corporate research is increasingly focusing on nanotechnology: the science of building computer chips or other devices out of elements measuring 100 nanometers or less. (Cnet 9/6/02) http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956970.html?tag=cd_mh Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20024