The Future Of Nanotechnology And Computers So Small You Can Swallow Them

November 23, 20157:50 PM ET

NPR Staff 

Original link:  https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/11/23/457129179/the-future-of-nanotechnology-and-computers-so-small-you-can-swallow-them

 

These tiny Proteus digital sensors and a wearable patch keep

track of how patients take their prescribed medications. It's

one example of the growing field of ingestible medical devices.

Proteus Digital Health

Tiny computers have allowed us to do things that were once considered science fiction. Take the 1960s film, Fantastic Voyage, where a crew is shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist.

While we aren't shrinking humans quite yet, scientists are working with nanotechnology to send computers inside patients for a more accurate and specific, diagnosis.

Albert Swiston, a biomaterials scientist at MIT, is testing a tiny pill that combines a microphone, a thermometer and a battery to collect several measures at once from inside a body. It's a latest in a series of ingestable computers like a Proteus sensor that tracks how patients take prescribed medications, a VitalSense from Philips that tracks a patient's temperature or a PillCam that allows people to skip colonoscopies.

Swiston and Stephen Shankland, senior writer for CNET covering digital technology, joined NPR on All Things Considered to discuss the future of nano tech on Monday.

Here are some takeaways.

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STEPHEN SHANKLAND

On how small computers have become

About 20 years ago it was a desktop, about 10 years ago it was a laptop — that kind of a computer is now about the size of your thumb.

Through the amazing technological innovations of Moore's Law, microprocessors — that's the chip brain that's inside every computer — have been getting smaller and smaller every year.

Instead of getting faster PCs, we're getting tinier PCs.

On why he isn't sold on thumb-sized computers

I think they open up a lot of new avenues because they're relatively inexpensive so you can fool around with them. It's not a delicate, precious object you have to worry a lot about. You can tinker with them. If you sit on it and it cracks, it isn't the end of the world. I think it can be liberating. But for most people, a traditional laptop is a much more useful product and it's going to run faster. These little tiny computers are constrained.

On the future of computing

You might look at a future where you don't have computers at all. The computing power you need is just woven into the fabric of your shirt, or maybe it is in your ring, or your watch. Maybe that device connects automatically to some screen next to you, or some projector you carry with you.

Maybe you won't even need a display — it will just get piped straight into your eyeballs.

ALBERT SWISTON

On his latest project — digestible sensors monitoring vital signs inside pigs

Shots - Health News

A Tiny Pill Monitors Vital Signs From Deep Inside The Body

It's a device that is so small, it's the size of a large multi-vitamin pill that you might take, and it is able to listen to your heart, and listen to your lungs, and it has a thermometer on board that can tell you what your heart rate, your breathing rate and what your body core temperature are. And then it can send that information outside of you to a smartphone or to a laptop computer, and tell you what those vital signs are without touching the body. It's not a wearable, it's an ingestible.

On the target audience

If you're a performance athlete, $70, which is roughly what it would cost to build such a device, is totally a trivial amount. Tom Brady could be taking these things every quarter. However, it's true that you couldn't be taking these every day — it would be just too expensive. So we're thinking of markets where a patient comes into an emergency room and needs to be monitored for a short period of time.

But you can imagine cases like military or performance sports where you could be taking these before every game or every mission.

On the potential for a computer — inside your body — being hacked

It's not implantable, it's not there forever. So while it's true that hackers can hack computers, you'd only have to worry about it for a couple of days. In fact, I don't think you'd have to worry about it very much, even for those few days, because that information that you're sending out in the current device we have is pretty simple.

On the future of ingestible technology

As electronics get smaller and smaller, more capabilities can be put onto one of these devices. Right now, we essentially have a microphone, but you can imagine having a real time camera, that is, say, able to stream through the body, or able to take samples of fluids in your body to tell you things like more subtle markers for cancer, for heart disease.

Being able to travel in the bloodstream or affect the nervous system, I think, is the next great frontier of medicine.

Energy applications of nanotechnology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Over the past few decades, the fields of science and engineering have been seeking to develop new and improved types of energy technologies that have the capability of improving life all over the world. In order to make the next leap forward from the current generation of technology, scientists and engineers have been developing energy applications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, a new field in science, is any technology that contains components smaller than 100 nanometers. For scale, a single virus particle is about 100 nanometers in width.

An important subfield of nanotechnology related to energy is nanofabrication. Nanofabrication is the process of designing and creating devices on the nanoscale. Creating devices smaller than 100 nanometers opens many doors for the development of new ways to capture, store, and transfer energy. The inherent level of control that nanofabrication could give scientists and engineers would be critical in providing the capability of solving many of the problems that the world is facing today related to the current generation of energy technologies.^[1]

People in the fields of science and engineering have already begun developing ways of utilizing nanotechnology for the development of consumer products. Benefits already observed from the design of these products are an increased efficiency of lighting and heating, increased electrical storage capacity, and a decrease in the amount of pollution from the use of energy. Benefits such as these make the investment of capital in the research and development of nanotechnology a top priority.

Consumer products

Recently, previously established and entirely new companies such as BetaBatt, Inc. and Oxane Materials are focusing on nanomaterials as a way to develop and improve upon older methods for the capture, transfer, and storage of energy for the development of consumer products.

ConsERV, a product developed by the Dais Analytic Corporation, uses nanoscale polymer membranes to increase the efficiency of heating and cooling systems and has already proven to be a lucrative design. The polymer membrane was specifically configured for this application by selectively engineering the size of the pores in the membrane to prevent air from passing, while allowing moisture to pass through the membrane. ConsERV's value is demonstrated in the form of an energy recovery a device which pretreats the incoming fresh air to a building using the energy found in the exhaust air steam using no moving parts to lower the energy and carbon footprint of existing forms of heating and cooling equipment Polymer membranes can be designed to selectively allow particles of one size and shape to pass through while preventing other. This makes for a powerful tool that can be used in all markets - consumer, commercial, industrial, and government products from biological weapons protection to industrial chemical separations. Dais's near term uses of this 'family' of selectively engineered nanotechnology materials, aside from ConsERV, include (a.) a completely new cooling cycle capable of replacing the refrigerant based cooling cycle the world has known for the past 100 plus years. This product, under development, is named NanoAir. NanoAir uses only water and this selectively engineered membrane material to cool (or heat) and dehumidify (or humidify) air. There are no fluorocarbon producing gasses used, and the energy required to cool a space drops as thermodynamics does the actual cooling. The company was awarded an Advanced Research Program Administration - Energy award in 2010, and a United States Department of Defense (DoD) grant in 2011 both designed to accelerate this newer, energy efficient technology closer to commercialization, and (b.) a novel way to clean most all contaminated forms of water called NanoClear. By using the selectivity of this hermetic, engineered composite material it can transfer only a water molecule from one face of the membrane to the other leaving behind the contaminants. It should also be noted Dais received a US Patent (Patent Number 7,990,679) in October 2011 titled "Nanoparticle Ultracapacitor". This patented item again uses the selectively engineered material to create an energy storage mechanism projected to have performance and cost advantages over existing storage technologies. The company has used this patent's concepts to create a functional energy storage prototype device named NanoCap. NanoCap is a form of ultra-capacitor potentially useful to power a broad range of applications including most forms of transportation, energy storage (especially useful as a storage media for renewable energy technologies), telecommunication infrastructure, transistor gate dielectrics, and consumer battery applications (cell phones, computers, etc.).^[2]

A New York-based company called Applied NanoWorks, Inc. has been developing a consumer product that utilizes LED technology to generate light. Light-emitting diodes or LEDs, use only about 10% of the energy that a typical incandescent or fluorescent light bulb uses and typically last much longer, which makes them a viable alternative to traditional light bulbs. While LEDs have been around for decades, this company and others like it have been developing a special variant of LED called the white LED. White LEDs consist of semi-conducting organic layers that are only about 100 nanometers in distance from each other and are placed between two electrodes, which create an anode, and a cathode. When voltage is applied to the system, light is generated when electricity passes through the two organic layers. This is called electroluminescence. The semiconductor properties of the organic layers are what allow for the minimal amount of energy necessary to generate light. In traditional light bulbs, a metal filament is used to generate light when electricity is run through the filament. Using metal generates a great deal of heat and therefore lowers efficiency.

Research for longer lasting batteries has been an ongoing process for years. Researchers have now begun to utilize nanotechnology for battery technology. mPhase Technologies in conglomeration with Rutgers University and Bell Laboratories have utilized nanomaterials to alter the wetting behavior of the surface where the liquid in the battery lies to spread the liquid droplets over a greater area on the surface and therefore have greater control over the movement of the droplets. This gives more control to the designer of the battery. This control prevents reactions in the battery by separating the electrolytic liquid from the anode and the cathode when the battery is not in use and joining them when the battery is in need of use.

Thermal applications also are a future applications of nanothechonlogy creating low cost system of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, changing molecular structure for better management of temperature

Reduction of energy consumption

A reduction of energy consumption can be reached by better insulation systems, by the use of more efficient lighting or combustion systems, and by use of lighter and stronger materials in the transportation sector. Currently used light bulbs only convert approximately 5% of the electrical energy into light. Nanotechnological approaches like or quantum caged atoms (QCAs) could lead to a strong reduction of energy consumption for illumination.^{[citation needed]}

Increasing the efficiency of energy production

Today's best solar cells have layers of several different semiconductors stacked together to absorb light at different energies but they still only manage to use 40 percent of the Sun's energy. Commercially available solar cells have much lower efficiencies (15-20%). Nanostructuring has been used to improve the efficiencies of established photovoltaic tehcnologies, for example by improving current collection in amorphous silicon devices,^[3] plasmonic enhancement in dye-sensitized solar cells,^[4] and improved light trapping in crystalline silicon.^[5] Furthermore, nanotechnology could help increase the efficiency of light conversion by using nanostructures with a continuum of bandgaps^{[citation needed]}, or by controlling the directivity and photon escape probability of photovoltaic devices.^[6]

The degree of efficiency of the internal combustion engine is about 30-40% at present. Nanotechnology could improve combustion by designing specific catalysts with maximized surface area. In 2005, scientists at the University of Toronto developed a spray-on nanoparticle substance that, when applied to a surface, instantly transforms it into a solar collector.^[7]

Nuclear Accident Cleanup and Waste Storage

Nanomaterials deployed by swarm robotics may be helpful for decontaminating a site of a nuclear accident which poses hazards to humans because of high levels of radiation and radioactive particles. Hot nuclear compounds such as corium or melting fuel rods may be contained in "bubbles" made from nanomaterials that are designed to isolate the harmful effects of nuclear activity occurring inside of them from the outside environment that organisms inhabit.^{[citation needed]}

Economic benefits

The relatively recent shift toward using nanotechnology with respect to the capture, transfer, and storage of energy has and will continue to have many positive economic impacts on society. The control of materials that nanotechnology offers to scientists and engineers of consumer products is one of the most important aspects of nanotechnology. This allows for an improved efficiency of products across the board.

A major issue with current energy generation is the loss of efficiency from the generation of heat as a by-product of the process. A common example of this is the heat generated by the internal combustion engine. The internal combustion engine loses about 64% of the energy from gasoline as heat and an improvement of this alone could have a significant economic impact. However, improving the internal combustion engine in this respect has proven to be extremely difficult without sacrificing performance. Improving the efficiency of fuel cells through the use of nanotechnology appears to be more plausible by using molecularly tailored catalysts, polymer membranes, and improved fuel storage.

In order for a fuel cell to operate, particularly of the hydrogen variant, a noble-metal catalyst (usually platinum, which is very expensive) is needed to separate the electrons from the protons of the hydrogen atoms. However, catalysts of this type are extremely sensitive to carbon monoxide reactions. In order to combat this, alcohols or hydrocarbons compounds are used to lower the carbon monoxide concentration in the system. This adds an additional cost to the device. Using nanotechnology, catalysts can be designed through nanofabrication that are much more resistant to carbon monoxide reactions, which improves the efficiency of the process and may be designed with cheaper materials to additionally lower costs.

Fuel cells that are currently designed for transportation need rapid start-up periods for the practicality of consumer use. This process puts a lot of strain on the traditional polymer electrolyte membranes, which decreases the life of the membrane requiring frequent replacement. Using nanotechnology, engineers have the ability to create a much more durable polymer membrane, which addresses this problem. Nanoscale polymer membranes are also much more efficient in ionic conductivity. This improves the efficiency of the system and decreases the time between replacements, which lowers costs.

Another problem with contemporary fuel cells is the storage of the fuel. In the case of hydrogen fuel cells, storing the hydrogen in gaseous rather than liquid form improves the efficiency by 5%. However, the materials that we currently have available to us significantly limit fuel storage due to low stress tolerance and costs. Scientists have come up with an answer to this by using a nanoporous styrene material (which is a relatively inexpensive material) that when super-cooled to around -196^oC, naturally holds on to hydrogen atoms and when heated again releases the hydrogen for use.

Capacitors: then and now

For decades, scientists and engineers have been attempting to make computers smaller and more efficient. A crucial component of computers are capacitors. A capacitor is a device that is made of a pair of electrodes separated by an insulator that each stores an opposite charge. A capacitor stores a charge when it is removed from the circuit that it is connected to; the charge is released when it is replaced back into the circuit. Capacitors have an advantage over batteries in that they release their charge much more quickly than a battery.

Traditional or foil capacitors are composed of thin metal conducting plates separated by an electrical insulator, which are then stacked or rolled and placed in a casing. The problem with a traditional capacitor such as this is that they limit how small an engineer can design a computer. Scientists and engineers have since turned to nanotechnology for a solution to the problem.

Using nanotechnology, researchers developed what they call “ultracapacitors.” An ultracapacitor is a capacitor that contains nanocomponents. Ultracapacitors are being researched heavily because of their high density interior, compact size, reliability, and high capacitance. This decrease in size makes it increasingly possible to develop much smaller circuits and computers. Ultracapacitors also have the capability to supplement batteries in hybrid vehicles by providing a large amount of energy during peak acceleration and allowing the battery to supply energy over longer periods of time, such as during a constant driving speed. This could decrease the size and weight of the large batteries needed in hybrid vehicles as well as take additional stress off the battery. However, the combination of ultracapacitors and a battery is not cost effective due to the need of additional DC/DC electronics to coordinate the two.

Nanoporous carbon aerogel is one type of material that is being utilized for the design of ultracapacitors. These aerogels have a very large interior surface area and can have its properties altered by changing the pore diameter and distribution along with adding nanosized alkali metals to alter its conductivity.

Carbon nanotubes are another possible material for use in an ultracapacitor. Carbon nanotubes are created by vaporizing carbon and allowing it to condense on a surface. When the carbon condenses, it forms a nanosized tube composed of carbon atoms. This tube has a high surface area, which increases the amount of charge that can be stored. The low reliability and high cost of using carbon nanotubes for ultracapacitors is currently an issue of research.

In a study concerning ultracapacitors or supercapacitors, researchers at the Sungkyunkwan University in the Republic of Korea explored the possibility of increasing the capacitance of electrodes through the addition of fluorine atoms to the walls of carbon nanotubes. As briefly mentioned before, carbon nanotubes are an increasing form of capacitors due to their superb chemical stability, high conductivity, light mass, and their large surface area. These researchers fluorinated single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) at high temperatures to bind fluorine atoms to the walls. The attached fluorine atoms changed the non-polar nanotubes to become polar molecules. This can be attributed to the charge transfer from the fluorine. This created dipole-dipole layers along the carbon nanotube walls. Testing of these fluorinated SWCNTs against normal state SWCNTs showed a difference in capacitance. It was determined that the fluorinated SWCNTs are advantageous in fabricating electrodes for capacitors and improve the wettability with aqueous electrolytes, which promotes the overall performance of supercapacitors. While this study brought to knowledge a more efficient example of capacitors, little is known about this new supercapacitor, large scale synthesis is lacking and is necessary for any massive production, and preparation conditions are quite tedious in achieving the final product.^[8]

Theory of capacitance

Understanding the concept of capacitance can be helpful in understanding why nanotechnology is such a powerful tool for the design of higher energy storing capacitors. A capacitor’s capacitance (C) or amount of energy stored is equal to the amount of charge (Q) stored on each plate divided by the voltage (V) between the plates. Another representation of capacitance is that capacitance (C) is approximately equal to the permittivity (ε) of the dielectric times the area (A) of the plates divided by the distance (d) between them. Therefore, capacitance is proportional to the surface area of the conducting plate and inversely proportional to the distance between the plates.

Using carbon nanotubes as an example, a property of carbon nanotubes is that they have a very high surface area to store a charge. Using the above proportionality that capacitance (C) is proportional to the surface area (A) of the conducting plate; it becomes obvious that using nanoscaled materials with high surface area would be great for increasing capacitance. The other proportionality described above is that capacitance (C) is inversely proportional to the distance (d) between the plates. Using nanoscaled plates such as carbon nanotubes with nanofabrication techniques, gives the capability of decreasing the space between plates which again increases capacitance.

Nanoelectronics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Nanoelectronics refer to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical properties need to be studied extensively. Some of these candidates include: hybrid molecular/semiconductor electronics, one-dimensional nanotubes/nanowires (e.g. Silicon nanowires or Carbon nanotubes) or advanced molecular electronics. Recent silicon CMOS technology generations, such as the 22 nanometer node, are already within this regime. Nanoelectronics are sometimes considered as disruptive technology because present candidates are significantly different from traditional transistors.

Fundamental Concepts

In 1965 Gordon Moore observed that silicon transistors were undergoing a continual process of scaling downward, an observation which was later codified as Moore's law. Since his observation transistor minimum feature sizes have decreased from 10 micrometers to the 28-22 nm range in 2011. The field of nanoelectronics aims to enable the continued realization of this law by using new methods and materials to build electronic devices with feature sizes on the nanoscale.

The volume of an object decreases as the third power of its linear dimensions, but the surface area only decreases as its second power. This somewhat subtle and unavoidable principle has huge ramifications. For example, the power of a drill (or any other machine) is proportional to the volume, while the friction of the drill's bearings and gears is proportional to their surface area. For a normal-sized drill, the power of the device is enough to handily overcome any friction. However, scaling its length down by a factor of 1000, for example, decreases its power by 1000³ (a factor of a billion) while reducing the friction by only 1000² (a factor of only a million). Proportionally it has 1000 times less power per unit friction than the original drill. If the original friction-to-power ratio was, say, 1%, that implies the smaller drill will have 10 times as much friction as power; the drill is useless.

For this reason, while super-miniature electronic integrated circuits are fully functional, the same technology cannot be used to make working mechanical devices beyond the scales where frictional forces start to exceed the available power. So even though you may see microphotographs of delicately etched silicon gears, such devices are currently little more than curiosities with limited real world applications, for example, in moving mirrors and shutters.^[1] Surface tension increases in much the same way, thus magnifying the tendency for very small objects to stick together. This could possibly make any kind of "micro factory" impractical: even if robotic arms and hands could be scaled down, anything they pick up will tend to be impossible to put down. The above being said, molecular evolution has resulted in working cilia, flagella, muscle fibers and rotary motors in aqueous environments, all on the nanoscale. These machines exploit the increased frictional forces found at the micro or nanoscale. Unlike a paddle or a propeller which depends on normal frictional forces (the frictional forces perpendicular to the surface) to achieve propulsion, cilia develop motion from the exaggerated drag or laminar forces (frictional forces parallel to the surface) present at micro and nano dimensions. To build meaningful "machines" at the nanoscale, the relevant forces need to be considered. We are faced with the development and design of intrinsically pertinent machines rather than the simple reproductions of macroscopic ones.

All scaling issues therefore need to be assessed thoroughly when evaluating nanotechnology for practical applications.

Approaches to Nanoelectronics

Nanofabrication

For example, electron transistors, which involve transistor operation based on a single electron. Nanoelectromechanical systems also fall under this category. Nanofabrication can be used to construct ultradense parallel arrays of nanowires, as an alternative to synthesizing nanowires individually.^[2][3]

Nanomaterials Electronics

Besides being small and allowing more transistors to be packed into a single chip, the uniform and symmetrical structure of nanowires and/or nanotubes allows a higher electron mobility (faster electron movement in the material), a higher dielectric constant (faster frequency), and a symmetrical electron/hole characteristic.^[4]

Also, nanoparticles can be used as quantum dots.

Molecular Electronics

Single molecule devices are another possibility. These schemes would make heavy use of molecular self-assembly, designing the device components to construct a larger structure or even a complete system on their own. This can be very useful for reconfigurable computing, and may even completely replace present FPGA technology.
Molecular electronics^[5] is a new technology which is still in its infancy, but also brings hope for truly atomic scale electronic systems in the future. One of the more promising applications of molecular electronics was proposed by the IBM researcher Ari Aviram and the theoretical chemist Mark Ratner in their 1974 and 1988 papers Molecules for Memory, Logic and Amplification, (see Unimolecular rectifier).^[6][7]

This is one of many possible ways in which a molecular level diode / transistor might be synthesized by organic chemistry. A model system was proposed with a spiro carbon structure giving a molecular diode about half a nanometre across which could be connected by polythiophene molecular wires. Theoretical calculations showed the design to be sound in principle and there is still hope that such a system can be made to work.

Other Approaches

Nanoionics studies the transport of ions rather than electrons in nanoscale systems.

Nanophotonics studies the behavior of light on the nanoscale, and has the goal of developing devices that take advantage of this behavior.

Nanoelectronic Devices

Current high-technology production processes are based on traditional top down strategies, where nanotechnology has already been introduced silently. The critical length scale of integrated circuits is already at the nanoscale (50 nm and below) regarding the gate length of transistors in CPUs or DRAM devices.

Computers

Simulation result for formation of inversion channel (electron density) and attainment of threshold voltage (IV) in a nanowire MOSFET. Note that the threshold voltage for this device lies around 0.45V.

Nanoelectronics holds the promise of making computer processors more powerful than are possible with conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques. A number of approaches are currently being researched, including new forms of nanolithography, as well as the use of nanomaterials such as nanowires or small molecules in place of traditional CMOS components. Field effect transistors have been made using both semiconducting carbon nanotubes^[8] and with heterostructured semiconductor nanowires (SiNWs).^[9]

In 1999, the CMOS transistor developed at the Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology in Grenoble, France, tested the limits of the principles of the MOSFET transistor with a diameter of 18 nm (approximately 70 atoms placed side by side). This was almost one tenth the size of the smallest industrial transistor in 2003 (130 nm in 2003, 90 nm in 2004, 65 nm in 2005 and 45 nm in 2007). It enabled the theoretical integration of seven billion junctions on a €1 coin. However, the CMOS transistor, which was created in 1999, was not a simple research experiment to study how CMOS technology functions, but rather a demonstration of how this technology functions now that we ourselves are getting ever closer to working on a molecular scale. Today it would be impossible to master the coordinated assembly of a large number of these transistors on a circuit and it would also be impossible to create this on an industrial level.^[10]

Memory Storage

Electronic memory designs in the past have largely relied on the formation of transistors. However, research into crossbar switch based electronics have offered an alternative using reconfigurable interconnections between vertical and horizontal wiring arrays to create ultra high density memories. Two leaders in this area are Nantero which has developed a carbon nanotube based crossbar memory called Nano-RAM and Hewlett-Packard which has proposed the use of memristor material as a future replacement of Flash memory.^{[citation needed]}

An example of such novel devices is based on spintronics.The dependence of the resistance of a material (due to the spin of the electrons) on an external field is called magnetoresistance. This effect can be significantly amplified (GMR - Giant Magneto-Resistance) for nanosized objects, for example when two ferromagnetic layers are separated by a nonmagnetic layer, which is several nanometers thick (e.g. Co-Cu-Co). The GMR effect has led to a strong increase in the data storage density of hard disks and made the gigabyte range possible. The so-called tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) is very similar to GMR and based on the spin dependent tunneling of electrons through adjacent ferromagnetic layers. Both GMR and TMR effects can be used to create a non-volatile main memory for computers, such as the so-called magnetic random access memory or MRAM.^{[citation needed]}

Novel Optoelectronic Devices

In the modern communication technology traditional analog electrical devices are increasingly replaced by optical or optoelectronic devices due to their enormous bandwidth and capacity, respectively. Two promising examples are photonic crystals and quantum dots.^{[citation needed]} Photonic crystals are materials with a periodic variation in the refractive index with a lattice constant that is half the wavelength of the light used. They offer a selectable band gap for the propagation of a certain wavelength, thus they resemble a semiconductor, but for light or photons instead of electrons. Quantum dots are nanoscaled objects, which can be used, among many other things, for the construction of lasers. The advantage of a quantum dot laser over the traditional semiconductor laser is that their emitted wavelength depends on the diameter of the dot. Quantum dot lasers are cheaper and offer a higher beam quality than conventional laser diodes.

Displays

The production of displays with low energy consumption might be accomplished using carbon nanotubes (CNT) and/or Silicon nanowires. Such nanostructures are electrically conductive and due to their small diameter of several nanometers, they can be used as field emitters with extremely high efficiency for field emission displays (FED). The principle of operation resembles that of the cathode ray tube, but on a much smaller length scale.^{[citation needed]}

Quantum Computers

Entirely new approaches for computing exploit the laws of quantum mechanics for novel quantum computers, which enable the use of fast quantum algorithms. The Quantum computer has quantum bit memory space termed "Qubit" for several computations at the same time. This facility may improve the performance of the older systems.^{[citation needed]}

Radios

Nanoradios have been developed structured around carbon nanotubes.^[11]

Energy Production

Research is ongoing to use nanowires and other nanostructured materials with the hope to create cheaper and more efficient solar cells than are possible with conventional planar silicon solar cells.^[12] It is believed that the invention of more efficient solar energy would have a great effect on satisfying global energy needs.

There is also research into energy production for devices that would operate in vivo, called bio-nano generators. A bio-nano generator is a nanoscale electrochemical device, like a fuel cell or galvanic cell, but drawing power from blood glucose in a living body, much the same as how the body generates energy from food. To achieve the effect, an enzyme is used that is capable of stripping glucose of its electrons, freeing them for use in electrical devices. The average person's body could, theoretically, generate 100 watts of electricity (about 2000 food calories per day) using a bio-nano generator.^[13] However, this estimate is only true if all food was converted to electricity, and the human body needs some energy consistently, so possible power generated is likely much lower. The electricity generated by such a device could power devices embedded in the body (such as pacemakers), or sugar-fed nanorobots. Much of the research done on bio-nano generators is still experimental, with Panasonic's Nanotechnology Research Laboratory among those at the forefront.

Medical Diagnostics

There is great interest in constructing nanoelectronic devices^[14][15][16] that could detect the concentrations of biomolecules in real time for use as medical diagnostics,^[17] thus falling into the category of nanomedicine.^[18] A parallel line of research seeks to create nanoelectronic devices which could interact with single cells for use in basic biological research.^[19] These devices are called nanosensors. Such miniaturization on nanoelectronics towards in vivo proteomic sensing should enable new approaches for health monitoring, surveillance, and defense technology.

What the Future Will Bring by Ray Kurzweil

 June 15, 2005 by Ray Kurzweil
Original link:  http://www.kurzweilai.net/what-the-future-will-bring
 Transcript of the Commencement Address by Ray Kurzweil at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, May 21, 2005, Worcester, Massachusetts. Published on KurzweilAI.net, June 15, 2005.

“Follow your passion,” Ray Kurzweil advised graduates in a commencement address on May 21 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the nation’s earliest technological universities. “Creating knowledge is what will be most exciting in life. To create knowledge you have to have passion, so find a challenge that you can be passionate about and you can find the ideas to overcome that challenge.” Kurzweil also described the three great coming revolutions-genetics, nanotechnology and robotics-and their implications for our lives ahead.

President Berkey, trustees, esteemed faculty, honored graduates, proud parents and guests, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a great honor to receive this distinction. Congratulations to all of you. I’ve long been an admirer of WPI and this is a terrific way to start your career. Actually judging by the practical experience you’ve had and the entrepreneurship which is blossoming on this campus you’ve already started your career.
A commencement is a good time to reflect on the future, on your future, and I’ve actually spent a few decades thinking about the future, trying to model technology trends. I suppose that’s one reason you asked me to share my ideas with you on what the future will hold, which will be rather different and empowering in terms of our ability to create knowledge, more so than many people realize.

I started thinking about the future and trying to anticipate it because of my interest in being an inventor myself. I realized that my inventions had to make sense when I finished a project, which would be three or four years later, and the world would be a different place. Everything would be different—the channels of distribution, the development tools. Most inventions, most technology projects fail not because the R&D department can’t get it to work—if you read business plans, 90 percent of those groups will do exactly what they say if they’re given the opportunity yet 90 percent of those projects will still fail because the timing is wrong. Not all the enabling factors will be in place when they’re needed. So realizing that, I began to try to model technology trends attempting to anticipate where technology will be. This has taken on a life of its own. I have a team of 10 people that gathers data in many different fields and we try to build mathematical models of what the future will look like.

Now, people say you can’t predict the future. And for some things that turns out to be true. If you ask me, “Will the stock price of Google be higher or lower three years from now?” that’s hard to predict. What will the next wireless common standard be? WiMAX, G-3, CDMA? That’s hard to predict. But if you ask me, “What will the cost of a MIPS of computing be in 2010?” or, “How much will it cost to sequence a base pair of DNA in 2012?” or, “What will the special and temporal resolution of non-invasive brain scanning be in 2014?,” I can give you a figure and it’s likely to be accurate because we’ve been making these predictions for several decades based on these models. There’s smooth, exponential growth in the power of these information technologies and computation that goes back a century—very smooth, exponential growth, basically doubling the power of electronics and communication every year. That’s a 50 percent deflation rate.

The same thing is true in biology. It took us 15 years to sequence HIV. We sequenced SARS in 31 days. We’ll soon be able to sequence a virus in just a few days’ time. We’re basically doubling the power of these technologies every year.

And that’s going to lead to three great revolutions that sometimes go by the letters GNR: genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. Let me describe these briefly and talk about the implications for our lives ahead.

G, genetics, which is really a term for biotechnology, means that we are gaining the tools to actually understand biology as information processes and reprogram them. Now, 99 percent of the drugs that are on the market today were not done that way. They were done through drug discovery, basically finding something. “Oh, here’s something that lowers blood pressure.” We have no idea why it works or how it works and invariably it has lots of side effects, similar to primitive man and woman when they discovered their first tools. “Oh, here’s a rock, this will make a good hammer.” But we didn’t have the means of shaping the tools to actually do a job. We’re now understanding the information processes underlying disease and aging and getting the tools to reprogram them.

We have little software programs inside us called genes, about 23 thousand of them. They were designed or evolved tens of thousands of years ago when conditions were quite different. I’ll give you just one example. The fat insulin receptor gene says, “Hold on to every calorie because the next hunting season may not work out so well.” And that’s a gene we’d like to reprogram. It made sense 20 thousand years ago when calories were few and far between. What would happen if we blocked that? We have a new technology that can turn genes off called RNA interference. So when that gene was turned off in mice, these mice ate ravenously and yet they remained slim. They got the health benefits of being slim. They didn’t get diabetes, didn’t get heart disease or cancer. They lived 20 to 25 percent longer while eating ravenously. There are several pharmaceutical companies who have noticed that might be a good human drug.

There’s many other genes we’d like to turn off. There are genes that are necessary for atherosclerosis, the cause of heart disease, to progress. There are genes that cancer relies on to progress. If we can turn these genes off, we could turn these diseases off. Turning genes off is just one of the methodologies. There are new forms of gene therapy that actually add genes so we’ll not just have designer babies but designer baby boomers. And you probably read this Korean announcement a couple of days ago of a new form of cell therapy where we can actually create new cells with your DNA so if you need a new heart or new heart cells you will be able to grow them with your own DNA, have them DNA-corrected, and thereby rejuvenate all your cells and tissues.

Ten or 15 years from now, which is not that far away, we’ll have the maturing of these biotechnology techniques and we’ll dramatically overcome the major diseases that we’ve struggled with for eons and also allow us to slow down, stop and even reverse aging processes.

The next revolution is nanotechnology, where we’re applying information technology to matter and energy. We’ll be able to overcome major problems that human civilization has struggled with. For example, energy. We have a little bit of sunlight here today. If we captured .03 percent, that’s three ten-thousandths of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, we could meet all of our energy needs. We can’t do that today because solar panels are very heavy, expensive and inefficient. New nano-engineered designs, designing them at the molecular level will enable us to create very inexpensive, very efficient, light-weight solar panels, store the energy in nano-engineered fuel cells, which are highly decentralized, and meet all of our energy needs.

The killer app of nanotechnology is something called nanobots, basically little robots the size of blood cells. If that sound very futuristic, there are four major conferences on that already and they’re already performing therapeutic functions in animals. One scientist cured Type-1 diabetes with these blood cell-sized nano-engineered capsules.

In regard to the 2020s, these devices will be able to go inside the human body and keep us healthy by destroying pathogens, correcting DNA errors, killing cancer cells and so on and even go into the brain, and interact with our biological neurons. If that sounds futuristic, there are already neural implants that are FDA-approved so there are people walking around who have computers in their brains and the biological neurons in their vicinity are perfectly happy to interact with these computerized devices. And the latest generation of the neural implant for Parkinson’s disease allows the patients to download new software to their neural implant from outside the patient. By the 2020s, we’ll be able to greatly enhance human intelligence, provide full immersion virtual reality, for example, from within the nervous system using these types of technologies.

And finally R, which stands for robotics, which is really artificial intelligence at the human level, we’ll see that in the late 2020s. By that time this exponential growth of computation will provide computer systems that are more powerful than the human brain. We’ll have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain to get the software algorithms, the secrets, the principles of operation of how human intelligence works. A side benefit of that is we’ll have greater insight into ourselves, how human intelligence works, how our emotional intelligence works, what human dysfunction is all about. We’ll be able to correct, for example, neurological diseases and also expand human intelligence. And this is not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines. We already routinely do things in our civilization that would be impossible without our computer intelligence. If all the AI programs, narrow AI, that’s embedded in our economic infrastructure were to stop today, our human civilization would grind to a halt. So we’re already very integrated with our technology. Computer technology used to be very remote. Now we carry it in our pockets. It’ll soon be in our clothing. It’s already begun migrating into our bodies and brains. We will become increasingly intimate with our technology.

The implications of all this is we will extend human longevity. We’ve already done that. A thousand years ago, human life expectancy was about 23. So most of you would be senior citizens if this were taking place a thousand years ago. In 1800, 200 years ago, human life expectancy was 37. So most of the parents here, including myself, wouldn’t be here. It was 50 years in 1900. It’s now pushing 80. Every time there’s been some advance in technology we’ve pushed it forward.: sanitation, antibiotics. This biotechnology revolution will expand it again. Nanotechnology will solve problems that we don’t get around to with biotechnology. We’ll have dramatic expansion of human longevity.

But actually life would get boring if we were sitting around for a few hundred years—we would be doing the same things over and over again—unless we had radical life expansion. And this technology will also expand our opportunities, expand our ability to create and appreciate knowledge. And creating knowledge is what the human species is all about. We’re the only species that has knowledge that we pass down from generation to generation. That’s what you’ve been doing for the last four years. That’s what you will continue doing indefinitely. We are expanding exponentially human knowledge and that is really what is exciting about the future.

I was told that commencement addresses should have a vision, which I’ve tried to share with you, and some practical advice. And my practical advice is that creating knowledge is what will be most exciting in life. And in order to create knowledge you have to have passion. So find a challenge that you can be passionate about, and there many of them that are worthwhile. And if you’re passionate about a worthwhile challenge, you can find the ideas to overcome that challenge. Those ideas exist and you can find them. And persistence usually pays off. You’ve all had timed tests where you had two or three hours to complete a test. But the tests in life are not timed. If you need an extra hour you can take it. Or an extra day, an extra week, an extra year, an extra decade. You’re the only one that will determine your own success or failure. Thomas Edison tried thousands of filaments to get his light bulb to work and none of them worked. And he easily could have said, “I guess all those skeptics who said that a practical light bulb was impossible were right.” Obviously he didn’t do that. You know the rest of the story.

If you have a challenge that you feel passionately about that’s really worthwhile, then you should never give in. To quote Winston Churchill, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.”

Congratulations once again. This is a great achievement. I wish all of you long lives—very long lives—of success, creativity, health and happiness. And may the Force be with you.

© 2005 KurzweilAI.net

Impact of nanotechnology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications.

Major benefits of nanotechnology include improved manufacturing methods, water purification systems, energy systems, physical enhancement, nanomedicine, better food production methods, nutrition and large-scale infrastructure auto-fabrication.^[1] Nanotechnology's reduced size may allow for automation of tasks which were previously inaccessible due to physical restrictions, which in turn may reduce labor, land, or maintenance requirements placed on humans.

Potential risks include environmental, health, and safety issues; transitional effects such as displacement of traditional industries as the products of nanotechnology become dominant, which are of concern to privacy rights advocates. These may be particularly important if potential negative effects of nanoparticles are overlooked.

Whether nanotechnology merits special government regulation is a controversial issue. Regulatory bodies such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate of the European Commission have started dealing with the potential risks of nanoparticles. The organic food sector has been the first to act with the regulated exclusion of engineered nanoparticles from certified organic produce, firstly in Australia and the UK,^[2] and more recently in Canada, as well as for all food certified to Demeter International standards^[3]

Overview

The presence of nanomaterials (materials that contain nanoparticles) is not in itself a threat. It is only certain aspects that can make them risky, in particular their mobility and their increased reactivity. Only if certain properties of certain nanoparticles were harmful to living beings or the environment would we be faced with a genuine hazard. In this case it can be called nanopollution.

In addressing the health and environmental impact of nanomaterials we need to differentiate between two types of nanostructures: (1) Nanocomposites, nanostructured surfaces and nanocomponents (electronic, optical, sensors etc.), where nanoscale particles are incorporated into a substance, material or device (“fixed” nano-particles); and (2) “free” nanoparticles, where at some stage in production or use individual nanoparticles of a substance are present. These free nanoparticles could be nanoscale species of elements, or simple compounds, but also complex compounds where for instance a nanoparticle of a particular element is coated with another substance (“coated” nanoparticle or “core-shell” nanoparticle).

There seems to be consensus that, although one should be aware of materials containing fixed nanoparticles, the immediate concern is with free nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles are very different from their everyday counterparts, so their adverse effects cannot be derived from the known toxicity of the macro-sized material. This poses significant issues for addressing the health and environmental impact of free nanoparticles.

To complicate things further, in talking about nanoparticles it is important that a powder or liquid containing nanoparticles almost never be monodisperse, but contain instead a range of particle sizes. This complicates the experimental analysis as larger nanoparticles might have different properties from smaller ones. Also, nanoparticles show a tendency to aggregate, and such aggregates often behave differently from individual nanoparticles.

Health impact

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A video on the health and safety implications of nanotechnology

The health impacts of nanotechnology are the possible effects that the use of nanotechnological materials and devices will have on human health. As nanotechnology is an emerging field, there is great debate regarding to what extent nanotechnology will benefit or pose risks for human health. Nanotechnology's health impacts can be split into two aspects: the potential for nanotechnological innovations to have medical applications to cure disease, and the potential health hazards posed by exposure to nanomaterials.

Medical applications

Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology.^[4] The approaches to nanomedicine range from the medical use of nanomaterials, to nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotechnology. Nanomedicine seeks to deliver a valuable set of research tools and clinically helpful devices in the near future.^[5][6] The National Nanotechnology Initiative expects new commercial applications in the pharmaceutical industry that may include advanced drug delivery systems, new therapies, and in vivo imaging.^[7] Neuro-electronic interfaces and other nanoelectronics-based sensors are another active goal of research. Further down the line, the speculative field of molecular nanotechnology believes that cell repair machines could revolutionize medicine and the medical field.
Nanomedicine research is directly funded, with the US National Institutes of Health in 2005 funding a five-year plan to set up four nanomedicine centers. In April 2006, the journal Nature Materials estimated that 130 nanotech-based drugs and delivery systems were being developed worldwide.^[8] Nanomedicine is a large industry, with nanomedicine sales reaching $6.8 billion in 2004. With over 200 companies and 38 products worldwide, a minimum of $3.8 billion in nanotechnology R&D is being invested every year.^[9] As the nanomedicine industry continues to grow, it is expected to have a significant impact on the economy.

Health hazards

Nanotoxicology is the field which studies potential health risks of nanomaterials. The extremely small size of nanomaterials means that they are much more readily taken up by the human body than larger sized particles. How these nanoparticles behave inside the organism is one of the significant issues that needs to be resolved. The behavior of nanoparticles is a function of their size, shape and surface reactivity with the surrounding tissue. Apart from what happens if non-degradable or slowly degradable nanoparticles accumulate in organs, another concern is their potential interaction with biological processes inside the body: because of their large surface, nanoparticles on exposure to tissue and fluids will immediately adsorb onto their surface some of the macromolecules they encounter. The large number of variables influencing toxicity means that it is difficult to generalise about health risks associated with exposure to nanomaterials – each new nanomaterial must be assessed individually and all material properties must be taken into account. Health and environmental issues combine in the workplace of companies engaged in producing or using nanomaterials and in the laboratories engaged in nanoscience and nanotechnology research. It is safe to say that current workplace exposure standards for dusts cannot be applied directly to nanoparticle dusts.
The extremely small size of nanomaterials also means that they are much more readily taken up by the human body than larger sized particles. How these nanoparticles behave inside the body is one of the issues that needs to be resolved. The behavior of nanoparticles is a function of their size, shape and surface reactivity with the surrounding tissue. They could cause overload on phagocytes, cells that ingest and destroy foreign matter, thereby triggering stress reactions that lead to inflammation and weaken the body’s defense against other pathogens. Apart from what happens if non-degradable or slowly degradable nanoparticles accumulate in organs, another concern is their potential interaction with biological processes inside the body: because of their large surface, nanoparticles on exposure to tissue and fluids will immediately adsorb onto their surface some of the macromolecules they encounter. This may, for instance, affect the regulatory mechanisms of enzymes and other proteins.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has conducted initial research on how nanoparticles interact with the body’s systems and how workers might be exposed to nano-sized particles in the manufacturing or industrial use of nanomaterials. NIOSH currently offers interim guidelines for working with nanomaterials consistent with the best scientific knowledge.^[10] At The National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory of NIOSH, studies investigating the filter penetration of nanoparticles on NIOSH-certified and EU marked respirators, as well as non-certified dust masks have been conducted.^[11] These studies found that the most penetrating particle size range was between 30 and 100 nanometers, and leak size was the largest factor in the number of nanoparticles found inside the respirators of the test dummies.^[12][13]

Other properties of nanomaterials that influence toxicity include: chemical composition, shape, surface structure, surface charge, aggregation and solubility,^[14] and the presence or absence of functional groups of other chemicals.^[15] The large number of variables influencing toxicity means that it is difficult to generalise about health risks associated with exposure to nanomaterials – each new nanomaterial must be assessed individually and all material properties must be taken into account.

Literature reviews have been showing that release of engineered nanoparticles and incurred personal exposure can happen during different work activities.^[16][17][18] The situation alerts regulatory bodies to necessitate prevention strategies and regulations at nanotechnology workplaces.

Environmental impact

The environmental impact of nanotechnology is the possible effects that the use of nanotechnological materials and devices will have on the environment.^[19] As nanotechnology is an emerging field, there is debate regarding to what extent industrial and commercial use of nanomaterials will affect organisms and ecosystems.

Nanotechnology's environmental impact can be split into two aspects: the potential for nanotechnological innovations to help improve the environment, and the possibly novel type of pollution that nanotechnological materials might cause if released into the environment.

Environmental applications

Green nanotechnology refers to the use of nanotechnology to enhance the environmental sustainability of processes producing negative externalities. It also refers to the use of the products of nanotechnology to enhance sustainability. It includes making green nano-products and using nano-products in support of sustainability. Green nanotechnology has been described as the development of clean technologies, "to minimize potential environmental and human health risks associated with the manufacture and use of nanotechnology products, and to encourage replacement of existing products with new nano-products that are more environmentally friendly throughout their lifecycle."^[20]
Green nanotechnology has two goals: producing nanomaterials and products without harming the environment or human health, and producing nano-products that provide solutions to environmental problems. It uses existing principles of green chemistry and green engineering^[21] to make nanomaterials and nano-products without toxic ingredients, at low temperatures using less energy and renewable inputs wherever possible, and using lifecycle thinking in all design and engineering stages.

Pollution

Nanopollution is a generic name for all waste generated by nanodevices or during the nanomaterials manufacturing process. Nanowaste is mainly the group of particles that are released into the environment, or the particles that are thrown away when still on their products.

Social impact

Beyond the toxicity risks to human health and the environment which are associated with first-generation nanomaterials, nanotechnology has broader societal impact and poses broader social challenges. Social scientists have suggested that nanotechnology's social issues should be understood and assessed not simply as "downstream" risks or impacts. Rather, the challenges should be factored into "upstream" research and decision-making in order to ensure technology development that meets social objectives^[22]
Many social scientists and organizations in civil society suggest that technology assessment and governance should also involve public participation^{[23][24][25][26]}

Over 800 nano-related patents were granted in 2003, with numbers increasing to nearly 19,000 internationally by 2012.^[27] Corporations are already taking out broad-ranging patents on nanoscale discoveries and inventions. For example, two corporations, NEC and IBM, hold the basic patents on carbon nanotubes, one of the current cornerstones of nanotechnology. Carbon nanotubes have a wide range of uses, and look set to become crucial to several industries from electronics and computers, to strengthened materials to drug delivery and diagnostics. Carbon nanotubes are poised to become a major traded commodity with the potential to replace major conventional raw materials.^[28]

Nanotechnologies may provide new solutions for the millions of people in developing countries who lack access to basic services, such as safe water, reliable energy, health care, and education. The 2004 UN Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation noted that some of the advantages of nanotechnology include production using little labor, land, or maintenance, high productivity, low cost, and modest requirements for materials and energy. However, concerns are frequently raised that the claimed benefits of nanotechnology will not be evenly distributed, and that any benefits (including technical and/or economic) associated with nanotechnology will only reach affluent nations.^[29]

Longer-term concerns center on the impact that new technologies will have for society at large, and whether these could possibly lead to either a post-scarcity economy, or alternatively exacerbate the wealth gap between developed and developing nations. The effects of nanotechnology on the society as a whole, on human health and the environment, on trade, on security, on food systems and even on the definition of "human", have not been characterized or politicized.

Regulation

Significant debate exists relating to the question of whether nanotechnology or nanotechnology-based products merit special government regulation. This debate is related to the circumstances in which it is necessary and appropriate to assess new substances prior to their release into the market, community and environment.
Regulatory bodies such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. or the Health & Consumer Protection Directorate of the European Commission have started dealing with the potential risks posed by nanoparticles. So far, neither engineered nanoparticles nor the products and materials that contain them are subject to any special regulation regarding production, handling or labelling. The Material Safety Data Sheet that must be issued for some materials often does not differentiate between bulk and nanoscale size of the material in question and even when it does these MSDS are advisory only.

Limited nanotechnology labeling and regulation may exacerbate potential human and environmental health and safety issues associated with nanotechnology.^[30] It has been argued that the development of comprehensive regulation of nanotechnology will be vital to ensure that the potential risks associated with the research and commercial application of nanotechnology do not overshadow its potential benefits.^[31] Regulation may also be required to meet community expectations about responsible development of nanotechnology, as well as ensuring that public interests are included in shaping the development of nanotechnology.^[32]

In "The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Nanotechnology," E. Marla Felcher suggests that the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public against unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with consumer products, is ill-equipped to oversee the safety of complex, high-tech products made using nanotechnology.