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A shrinking world inside
agriculture
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| These Purdue-developed nanoclusters
of gold at just four nanometers will be used in molecule-sized
electronics. |
A short history of a small science
California Institute
of Technology professor
Richard Feynman received a Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work in quantum
electrodynamic physics. He was known for working on the atomic bomb
in World War II, as a best-selling author, and for helping to solve
the mystery of the Challenger space shuttle explosion. But Feynman
is also celebrated as the father of nanotechnology for a speech
he gave at Cal Tech in 1959 titled, "There's
plenty of room at the bottom."
That year, the first computers with transistors were
released on the market. While they were not the room-sized behemoths
that had previously existed, Feynman said that computers and other
devices could get much, much, much smaller.
"It is a staggeringly small world that is below,"
Feynman said. "In the year 2000, when they look back at this age,
they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody
began seriously to move in this direction."
Nanotechnology, as this discipline would come to be
known, means building materials, devices or systems that are the
size of molecules, often by rearranging atoms or molecules themselves
as if they were blocks or bricks.
Scientists insist that their terms have precise meanings.
To most of us "micro" means something that is very small; to a scientist,
it means something that is in the realm of one one-millionth (10-6)
of a meter in size. "Nano," on the other hand, is something that
is one one-billionth (10-9) of a meter in size.
One nanometer is about the size of four water molecules
placed side by side, or, to put it another way, about one one-thousandth
the length of a single-cell bacterium.
Nanotechnology is often defined as the fabrication,
study and modeling of principles and devices that have at least
one dimension that is 100 nanometers or smaller.
Kamyar Haghighi, Purdue professor of agricultural
and biological engineering, adds that the nanometer is a magical
point on the dimension scale. "Nanostructures are at the confluence
of the smallest human-made devices and most molecules of living
systems," he says.
Scientists have been creating things on a nanoscale
for at least a century. The entire science of chemistry is built
on constructing new products by manipulating atoms. But the difference
between chemistry and nanotechnology is the difference between throwing
a bullet and shooting it. Or, to put it another way, Ralph Merkle,
a researcher at the nanotechnology company Zyvex, says that traditional
chemistry is like trying to build a Lego set while wearing boxing
gloves.
Building materials, systems and devices using nanotechnology
will give scientists and engineers unprecedented control over properties,
such as strength or electrical and heat conductivity.
Despite the potential, work at the nanoscale didn't
begin in the 1960s as Feynman hoped. But interest in the small science
did take off in the 1980s.
In 1981, K. Eric Drexler, founder and chairman of
the Foresight Institute,
a nonprofit organization that focuses on advanced technologies,
published the first scientific paper on nanotechnology in The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. That same
year, IBM scientists developed one of the most important tools of
nanotechnology, the scanning tunneling microscope, which can move
individual atoms on a surface.
Shortly thereafter, scientists at Purdue constructed
one of the microscopes, making the University one of the first educational
institutions in the world to have this research capability.
In 1986, Drexler again led the charge with the first
book on nanotechnology, titled Engines of Creation: The
Coming Era of Nanotechnology, an optimistic look at the
potential of the science. The book spawned a flurry of science fiction
novels based on his predictions.
By the mid-1980s, researchers at Purdue were also
doing work at the nanoscale. In 1987 John Cushman, professor of
applied mathematics and environmental physics in the departments
of Mathematics and Agronomy, published an article in the scientific
journal Nature on confined nano films and strain-induced liquification.
A year later, Purdue physics professor Ronald Reifenberger
www.physics.purdue.edu/~rr/ and colleagues briefly held a world
record for the smallest symbol ever written, [Hbar], which is the
symbol of Planck's Constant. The symbol was just 40 by 60 nanometers,
or about the size of a large protein.
Although such research proceeded in relative obscurity,
within a decade nanotechnology was a buzzword appearing on every
policymaker's agenda. Early in 2000, President Bill Clinton established
the National Nanotechnology Initiative, www.nano.gov which was given
an annual budget of half a billion dollars to fund nanotechnology
projects.
In July 2000, scientists in Purdue's schools of Agriculture
and Engineering announced the mating of a protein
and a computer chip. Also that year, Purdue established the
Center for Nanoscale Electronic and Biological Devices. And in 2001, a ceremonial
groundbreaking was held for the Birck Nanotechnology Center, which
will be in Purdue's newly announced Discovery
Park.
Related links:
engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/
www.agry.purdue.edu
www.foodsci.purdue.edu
engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/
A shrinking world inside
agriculture
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