The first of many mysteries to cross the minds of visitors to Taiwan's inaugural Nanotechnology Conference and Exhibition is what on Earth the technology has to do with underwear. Wasn't this the new great realm of science and engineering that was to rid the world of diseases, revolutionize manufacturing, and create materials many times stronger than steel, among a host of other applications? Wasn't our journey into inner space going to be as great as our journey to outer space?
It was. And for many of the industry's start-up enterprises and long-term advocates, the final destination that molecular engineering promised remains, though the horizon may be further away than it at first seemed.
"In order to attract investment, there had to be more immediate business applications. In order for there to be further research and development, the existing technology must prove profitable," said Stephen P.H. Chung (
And so, underwear. Fibers spun from nano-sized materials create undergarments that breathe easily, keep the wearer cool, and resist odors. Other early-market applications of nanotechnology include fog-resistant glass, stain and scratch-resistant materials, baseballs that fly farther and faster, cosmetics that apply more evenly, solar cells that make better use of sunlight, alcohol that distills quickly and tires that hug the road. The uses seem limitless and the many business opportunities promised by the convention's keynote speakers are obvious. But make no mistake; the nanotechnology industry in its current state, has more to do with industry than nanotechnology.
Big ideas
The technology had its intellectual beginnings in a 1959 talk given by physicist Richard Feynman titled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." In it he said that the principles of physics, as far as he could see, "do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom."
He told a classroom of incredulous Caltech students about a future in which all the information written in every book in the Library of Congress, The British Museum and National Library of France -- a combined 24 million volumes, he estimated -- could be written on a cube of material "one two-hundredth of an inch wide -- which is the barest piece of dust that can be made out by the human eye." He mused about the medical possibilities if patients could "swallow their surgeon" and of the physical possibility of building atomic-scale machines that were themselves capable of building similar atomic-scale machines -- a production process that already had a precedent, he said, in our own DNA.
He likely didn't conceive of nanotech underwear.
"In the year 2000, when they look back at this age," he said, "they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction."
In fact, things have only recently begun moving. And what now passes for nanotechnology would not likely pass Feynman's muster. Rather than moving and placing individual cells, current applications call only for working with much larger clusters. Because it's still working on a very small scale -- a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter -- engineers began using the term to describe the products they were making, even thought they were using old technologies to make them. They did so at a time when "nanotech" became a buzzword that sold products.
Blurring the lines
"The problem started with the word," said scientist and author K. Eric Drexler. "In labeling the Feynman vision nanotechnology, the author chose a word with roots that let it fit any nanoscale technology no matter how old or mundane." That author was Drexler himself, who coined the term in his seminal 1986 book, Engines of Creation "I wouldn't say that any of the products you see on the floor of this convention have anything to do with Feynman's idea of molecular manufacturing," said Roger Chung (鐘明勳) of Analytik Jena Taiwan, a manufacturer of particle analysis instruments. "They evolved from existing technologies that tried to make things smaller, but the revolution in manufacturing hasn't happened yet."
One reason it hasn't, Chung said, is that the industry, being an industry, needs to make money to prove its viability. It's a chicken and egg problem: Without profits, there will be no money put into research and development; without further research and development, the industry won't be profitable.
Drexler has also claimed that funding for nanotech enterprises has gone awry.
"The [nanotechnology] funding coalition has obscured the Feynman vision by misunderstanding its basis, distrusting its promise, and fearing that public concern regarding its dangers might interfere with research funding. In response, leaders of a funding coalition have attempted to narrow nanotechnology to exclude one area of nanoscale technology -- the Feynman vision itself."
Hamlet said he could be bound in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space, were it not that he had bad dreams. The same might be said of the nanotech industry. Nightmare scenarios of Feynman's self-replicating microscopic particles swallowing up the earth in a wildly expanding "grey goo" have struck fears in some that we're flirting with our own demise. Others have more moderately voiced concerns that man-made, nanometer-sized particles interacting with nature's own atomic structure could have a serious environmental impact.
Drexler suggests that, besides this public relations problem, another stumbling block to nanotechnology's development has been a breakdown in internal communications; the fundamental difference between science and engineering. Scientists start with a physical system and try to develop a theory, or model, that describes it. In contrast, engineers start with a descriptive model, and seek to build a physical system.
"The molecular world has been the province of scientists," he writes. "Whether the people doing the work call themselves "scientists" or "engineers" is of little importance. Regardless of labels, progress in molecular systems engineering, like that in other fields of technology, will require an engineering approach."
Of course, no one is doubting that progress will come. Rather, the debate is at what pace and in what direction. The current state of the industry favors Taiwan, industry watchers say, because it suits the nation's strongest industries. As regards materials, Taiwan is the world's No. 2 producer of polyurethane synthetic leather. Even more important, nanotech advancements in submicron lithography could help keep the island apace of competitors in the semiconductor industry.
"Semiconductor lithography is coming to a critical point," said Chang Shinn-jen (
Small packages
Still smaller chips are just one necessity that may give birth to further nanotech invention. Drexler outlines several other areas that could prove equally necessary. Like Feynman, he sees a need for nano-sized medical applications; tiny robots that could walk into blood vessels to clear clogged arteries or be programmed to identify and eliminate HIV cells. Molecular manufacturing would allow for materials to be constructed without flaws, greatly enhancing their strength. And the manufacturing process would be emissions-free.
But perhaps the greatest necessity, Drexler argues, will be for governments to keep ahead of other governments developing nanotech weapons. At the same time, he says, such weapons would not have to be lethal, but could be designed to incapacitate an opponent.
Whether or not such devices will be developed and produced in Taiwan remains to be seen. The government has allocated NT$8.43 billion to the National Science and Technology Program for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology up to this year. Another NT$12 billion is to be spent through 2008. That's a fraction of the US$2.4 trillion that is estimated to be spent on nanotech development worldwide through 2014, but the Taiwanese government prides itself on being the current world leader in per-capita nanotech spending.
For now, as Stephen Chung said, the industry must prove its viability.
"Our government has, for several years now, wanted Taiwan to become a world leader in research and development," Chung said. "Nanotechnology is definitely an area where we could do that." In the meantime, he pointed out, we're going to see a lot of products like faster baseballs, fog-free car windows, longer-life batteries, and of course, underwear that stays fresh.
But tucked into one booth of the exhibition hall is a product that isn't very small at all compared with what's to be found in neighboring booths, but might indeed help insure that the coming nanotech revolution starts in Taiwan.
It's a comic book, the adventures of Nano BlasterMan (
"The idea is get kids excited about the future by teaching them that some of these ideas that seem wild now are actually possible in principle," said a Ministry of Education representative, "Hopefully some of our school kids will want to grow up to be Nano BlasterMan."
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