Nano science and technology potential on industry opportunities and challenges

2004 SEMI nano Forum recently held in Texas, Austen. At the meeting, some speakers believe that nanotechnology has unlimited potential to solve most industrial problems. "We will solve our industrial problems from the bottom up." Zvi, chief executive officer of applied Nanotechnology (Applied Nanotech), said Yaniv.

Before this, nano technology industry needs to get adequate funding. In a forum on the commercialization of nanotechnology commercialization issues, experts on the lack of venture capital in the field of science and technology, the reasons for the interest of a discussion.

Yaniv believes that the main obstacle is not regarded as a nanotechnology specific science and technology, but a way of science and technology. "We still look at and solve problems at the molecular level." He said.

According to Lux Research estimates, the United States this year in nanotechnology venture capital investment will fall from $385 million in 2002 to $200 million. "Venture capitalists know little about nanotechnology - they don't want to invest in materials." Lux research vice president Matthew Nordan said.

Although nano technology in venture capital investment may be difficult, but it can get enough government funding. For example, Taiwan, China, 6 years of research on nanotechnology budget reached $640 million. "All countries and the international community have invested a large amount of energy in the world," Intel company and project technology manager Frank Robertson commented, "we hope that the coordination and optimization of the use of these resources, and do not want to get."

Robertson added that the existing infrastructure semiconductor industry which can be used as a technology platform, but also as an economic platform, thus speeding up the process of new nano technology. In this way, nano technology will help extend the application of Moore's law, the rule in the past 40 years to witness the entire process of miniaturization of silicon devices.

On the first day of a keynote speech nano forum, Texas Rice University in Houston, director of carbon nano science and technology laboratory Richard Smalley pointed out that the shortage of fossil fuels is the most serious problem facing human civilization. Nanotechnology may provide the ability to store energy so that it can be used in large quantities. "We need new technology to solve the energy problem." He said.

But Smalley warned that the solution to the future of the United States may lack scientists to identify the problem. This is because science and technology as a career direction of young people less and less. "Where are the new generation of Edison?" He asked.

"Sputnik and the lunar landing time is the only time we successfully put Americans to attract interest in the field of science and technology era." Smalley said he was "buckyball" (allotropes of carbon molecules, a football shaped) and the 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry.

The other speaker nano forum pointed out that the difference between nano technology and microelectronics. "Nanotechnology is not about how to make things smaller, but what happens when things get smaller,"

Nanosys Inc. executive chairman Larry Bock said. "We can combine two or more than two different materials into a nanostructure, so that these nanostructures are no longer material, but" active "devices." He said.

(Foresight Institute) prospective association chairman Scott Mize pointed out that nano technology is still in its infancy, equivalent to before the invention of the integrated circuit in the information technology industry. He said: "we estimate that the development of nanotechnology will take decades, and now we are only at the beginning of the exponential curve."

Mize, nano science and technology industry needs to focus on the big challenge, because the problem is bigger, the bigger the market". He called for the development of the technology process, so that the field of nanotechnology closely follow the leadership of the semiconductor industry, which helps to develop industry standards.