Expert: Dave Keeling - 8/4/2001

Question
Dear Mr. Keeling,

   I just want to get a general feel. What do you think is the most realistic application for nanotechnology in the next 10 years and what are its probable limitations?


Answer
The general consensus of opinion seems to be that nanotechnology will not be directly affecting people's lives for some time yet, the field is very much still in its infancy and much more research needs to be done.
However, the area that is likely to benefit first is computing and chip manufacture. Smaller electronic components generally = faster operation because the electrons take less time to get through the device. Standard lithography techniques quite routinely make devices on a scale of 0.13 micrometres (or 130 nanometres so I suppose you could say we already have nanotechnology) but standard techniques cannot keep shrinking these sizes down forever. There are certain techniques that have been demonstrated in research laboratories that are completely unrelated to the conventional fabrication techniques and are already close to or matching the current device dimensions. My personal favourite is a group who used an inkjet printer to literally print an electronic circuit on a piece of semicondductor. There are also implications for data storage. A recently published piece of work demonstrated a method that can possibly be used to store data on a hard disk 100 times more densely than current technologies....that adds up to roughly a Terabyte on something the size of a standard hard disk.
The next step would be quantum computing - ussing the laws of quantum mechanics directly to carry ultra-fast computation. This will be a radical step because it is not simply making faster chips but changing the way computation is carried out entirely. This will probably not be happening for 20-50 years.

In other areas, there are already lots of new techniques for micromachining and nanomachining materials i.e. making actual three dimenional structures on this sort of scale. There may be applications for this in the medical sector with the ultimate holy grail being to work on the human body at the celluler and molecular level with machines that are the same scale and dimension as the cells. This kind of sophistication is more in the realm of 100+ years though.

This is just a brief overview of my personal opinions...if you want to learn more of what has already been achieved and other peoples thoughts of where we're heading then there is a lot of information on the web-page of the uk's institute of nanotechnology at:
http://www.nano.org.uk

I hope this has helped and please feel free to get back to me if there is anything I can clarify for you.
Regards,

Dave Keeling.