NanotechnologyDo You Want Miniature Robots

Inside Your Head?

The Lazarus Vendetta

• A special research center has been set up• Several of the groups are working on

nanotechnology• One group was working on a nannite that would

look for a specific enzyme to trigger it• Then it would go to the cancerous cell and remove

it from the body• The rest would pass harmlessly out through normal

means• A protest group masses outside when it is

announced that the President of the USA is coming for a visit

The Lazarus Vendetta

• The facility is infiltrated two days before the President’s arrival

• Canisters with bombs attached are planted

• The bombs go off and millions of nannites are released

• The protesters inhale the nannites

• Instead of healing them, the protesters are slowly dissolved from the inside out

What is Nanotechnology?

• Exists on the nanometer scale - 0.1 to 100 nm (1/1,000 µm, or 1/1,000,000 mm ) 10-9

• Any technology done at the molecular level

• Scale – a standard sheet of paper100,000 nanometers thick

• “world of atoms, molecules, macromolecules, quantum dots, and macromolecular assemblies “ (wikipedia.com)

Current Uses

• Nanowires– Must be created in a laboratory– Used in semiconductors– Wires that are a line of atoms

• Pentium III – 28 Million transistors

• Pentium IV – 42 Million transistors

Current Uses• Molecular self-assembly

– Polymers– Occurs in nature (cell growth, galaxies)– Use these properties to create biomaterials– Produce materials that can grow themselves

Research• January 2000

• President Bill Clinton gave $227 million increase in nanotechnology research

• 2001 – total was $497 million

• Will change our lives in this century

Speculation• Replicate anything from diamonds to food

and water

• Eradicate hunger

• Prolong life

• Perform cosmetic surgery

• Cure diseases

• Environmental cleanup

Nanotechnology InitiativeThe National Nanotechnology Initiative is an American

federal nanoscale science, engineering, and technology research and development program. Initiative participants state that its four goals are to:

• maintain a world-class research and development (R&D) program;

• facilitate technology transfer; • develop educational resources, a skilled workforce, and

supporting research infrastructure and tools; and • support responsible development of nanotechnology.

www.nano.govFrom Wikipedia.com

Participants• Consumer Product Safety Commission • Department of Agriculture

Cooperative State Research, Extension, and Education Service

• Department of Agriculture Forest Service • Department of Commerce Technology Administration • Department of Commerce

Bureau of Industry and Security • Department of Education • Environmental Protection Agency • Department of Commerce

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Participants (cont’d)• Intelligence Community • Department of Defense • National Aeronautics and Space Administration • Department of Energy

Office of Basic Energy Sciences Office of Industrial Technologies

• National Science Foundation • Department of Health and Human Services

National Institutes of Health • Nuclear Regulatory Commission• Food and Drug Administration

Department of Health and Human Services

Participants (pg 3)

• Department of State • National Institute for Occupational Safety and Healt

h Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Department of Health and Human Services

• Department of Homeland Security (which includes Transportation Security Administration)

• Department of Justice • Department of Labor • Department of Transportation • International Trade Commission • U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

News Flash• April 13, 2006 (SeattlePI, AP)

• “Magic Nano” – aerosol product sold in Germany

• 97 people became intoxicated and suffered respiratory problems from inhaling the fumes

• FDA now considering stiffer regulations for items using nanotechnology for “drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices”

The Future of Nanotechnology• Quantum dots

• Nanogears

• Medical uses

• Machines that build and repair themselves

• Manufacturing diamonds and oil at the molecular level

Nanogears

http://www.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm

Nanomanufacturing• Scientists must be able to manipulate

individual atoms. This means that they will have to develop a technique to grab single atoms and move them to desired positions. In 1990, IBM researchers showed that it is possible to manipulate single atoms. They positioned 35 xenon atoms on the surface of a nickel crystal, using an atomic force microscopy instrument.

Taken from “howstuffworks.com”

Nanomanufacturing• The next step will be to develop nanoscopic

machines, called assemblers, that can be programmed to manipulate atoms and molecules at will. Trillions of assemblers will be needed to develop products in a viable time frame.

• In order to create enough assemblers to build consumer goods, some nanomachines, called replicators, will be programmed to build more assemblers.

Computer Industry

• Moore’s Law reaching its physical limit

• Molecular computers could contain storage devices capable of storing trillions of bytes of information in a structure the size of a sugar cube.

• Meyya Meyyapan, manager of devices at NASA Ames Research Center in San Jose recently suggested that, "...the real applications of nanoelectronics are 15 years out." (July 2000 - Futurist.com)

Commerce Secretary Gutierrez Announces New Nanotechnology

Center March 20, 2006. U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Carlos M. Gutierrez announced the launch of a state-of-the-art center for collaborative nanotechnology research at Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD. Scientists from U.S. companies, universities and government will focus on overcoming major technical obstacles to cost-effective manufacturing of products made with components the size of atoms and molecules.

www.nano.gov)

NNI Funding in the President's 2007 Budget

• The President’s 2007 Budget provides over $1.2 billion for the multi-agency National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), bringing the total investment since the NNI was established in 2001 to over $6.5 billion

Current Research• EPA has awarded 14 grants totaling $5

million to universities to investigate potential health and environmental effects of manufactured nanomaterials

• To date, EPA has funded 65 grants for more than $22 million related to the environmental applications and/or implications of manufactured nanomaterials

Environmental Uses• This emerging field has the potential to

transform environmental protection. Researchers are now testing iron nanoparticles that could clean up pollutants in large areas of groundwater cheaper and more effectively than any existing techniques," said Dr. George Gray, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development.

Discoveries• Sumio Iijima discovered the nanotube in

1991 – new form of carbon

• 1995 discovered that nanotubes are excellent sources of field emitted electrons

• Jumbotron lamp – based on nanotube was created in 2000

• Currently used in most athletic stadiums

Nanotechnology is Offering Exciting New Possibilities for

Treating Breast Tumors• Dec. 12, 2005, Nanotechwire — Nanotechnology,

using particles as small as 100 nanometers in size, is offering exciting new possibilities for finding and treating breast tumors, according to speakers at the 28th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium being held this week. Two researchers from Rice University in Houston, Texas, offered enticing insights into how these minute particles can be manipulated to have different properties, and tagged with antibodies to target them specifically at cancer cells

Nano-sponges for Toxic Metals

• Nov. 14, 2005, Physorg — Microscopic particles honeycombed with holes only nanometers wide soon could help purify industrial runoff, coal plant smoke, crude oil and drinking water of toxic metals. The particles, made of glass or natural diatomaceous earth, are 5 millionths to 50 millionths of a meter wide and filled with holes a thousand times smaller. The surfaces of these particles can bear a variety of flavors or coatings that soak up specific toxic metals -- for instance, sulfurous organic coatings attract mercury, while coppery organic coatings bind to arsenic and radioactive metals known as actinides. The particles' spongy nature gives them an incredible 6,400 square feet to nearly 11,000 square feet of surface area per gram of material with which to draw in toxins

Virginia Team Using Nano for Brain Cancer Imaging,

Treatment• Nov. 14, 2005, Small Times/Richmond Times -

Dispatch — Virginia researchers are loading tiny, hollow carbon balls with metals and medicine they say could improve the ability to detect and destroy brain-cancer cells. Brain cancers are rare but often deadly. Cancerous cells often stray from the main tumor, making them difficult to find. They're troublesome to treat, in part because many medicines can't get from the bloodstream into the brain, and tricky to remove

Quantum Dots Show White Light Promise

• Oct. 28, 2005, Small Times/United Press International — Vanderbilt University scientists in Nashville, Tenn., say quantum dots could become the successor to the light bulb. Until now quantum dots have been known primarily for their ability to produce a dozen different distinct colors of light simply by varying the size of the individual nanocrystals: a capability particularly suited to fluorescent labeling in biomedical applications. But Vanderbilt chemists have discovered a way to make quantum dots spontaneously produce broad-spectrum white light.

Nanotubes Inspire New Technique For Healing Broken

BonesJul. 8, 2005, Science Daily — Scientists have

shown for the first time that carbon nanotubes make an ideal scaffold for the growth of bone tissue. The new technique could change the way doctors treat broken bones, allowing them to simply inject a solution of nanotubes into a fracture to promote healing

Quantum Dots Detect Viral Infections

Jun. 10, 2005, PhysOrg — In what may be one of the first medical uses of nanotechnology, a chemist and a doctor who specializes in infectious childhood diseases have joined forces to create an early detection method for a respiratory virus that is the most common cause of hospitalization among children under five.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) sends about 120,000 children to the hospital in the United States each year. Although it is only life-threatening in one case out of every 100, it infects virtually all children by the time they are five. Few children in the U.S. die from RSV, but it also attacks the elderly, causing some 17,000 to 18,000 deaths annually. Individuals with impaired immune systems are another highly susceptible group.

Vanderbilt researchers report that not only can a quantum dot system detect the presence of RSV particles in a matter of hours, rather than the two to five days required by current tests, but it is also more sensitive, allowing it to detect the virus earlier in the course of an infection

Nanoparticle Breast Cancer Drug Approved by FDA

• Mar. 10, 2005, Science Blog — Research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine played a significant role in Food and Drug Administration approval of Abraxane (paclitaxel protein-bound particles for injectable suspension), indicated for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

• "The approval means that women with metastatic breast cancer no longer need to endure the toxicities associated with solvents and will no longer need steroid premedication when they receive this albumin-bound form of paclitaxel," said principal clinical study investigator William J. Gradishar, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Feinberg and co-director, Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Abraxane is engineered using a proprietary process (protein-bound nanoparticle technology) to create tiny particles (nanoparticles 100th the size of a red blood cell) in which the active chemotherapeutic drug, paclitaxel, is bound to a naturally occurring protein called albumin

Fact or Fiction• Prince asks scientists to look into 'grey goo'

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor(Filed: 05/06/2003)

• Fears by the Prince of Wales that armies of microscopic robots could turn the face of the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland have prompted the nation's top scientists and engineers to launch an inquiry

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/05/nano05.xml

Research at UW

• http://www.nano.washington.edu/index.asp

Quantum Computers

• Currently we use digital computers 1 or 0

• Quantum computers would use qubits– 1 or 0– Or both– Or in-between as a superposition

• Qubits are atoms that work as computer memory and processor at the same time

Quantum Computers (2)

• Current computers run in gigaflops (billions of floating point operations per second

• 30 qubit machine could do the equivalent of 10 teraflops (trillions of floating point operations per second)

• Still in early stages

• Show potential to make encoding and decoding of information easier

Center for Responsible Nanotechnology

• http://www.crnano.org/

Q & A