How many micro-devices can you fit on the cross section of one human hair? Though the riddle may sound far-fetched, researchers who spend their workday in the quantum world will take this question in stride, answering with a glib: “anywhere from 100 to 100,000.” They are speaking the language of nanotechnology­, the science of manipulating atoms and molecules to create tiny devices that can only be seen when magnified more than 10,000 times with an atomic-force scope.

“Structures that are assembled by human ingenuity,” is how Jerry Stringfellow, dean of engineering at the University of Utah, would classify creations made using nanotechnology. Stringfellow and his colleagues at the U are some of the players on the forefront of nanotechnology research in Utah. “Everyone in the field recognizes that it [nanotechnology] has the potential to change the world,” Stringfellow says, “as long as we have continuity in funding and realize that it will take a decade before many of these things will be realized.”

Nano is the Greek word for dwarf, and the National Nanotechnology Initiative defines nanotech as any technology using features of 100 nanometers or less (a nanometer is 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair). But while nanotech operates on a dwarflike scale, its potential is predicted to be gigantic. The National Science Foundation conservatively predicts a $1 trillion global market for nanotech in a decade.

The hub of nanotechnology is predicted to spin out a range of super-sleek products, built one molecule at a time. The range of industries that will benefit from nano-engineered products is too exhaustive to list. A trip to the doctor may include injecting a micro machine into your bloodstream that will probe around looking for unwanted pathogens, repairing damaged nerve tissue or delivering drugs. Within the next 10 years, consumers may fill their shopping bags with products bearing the hip nanotech label — products that are cheaper, more efficient and much more durable.

Nanotech is already being used in products like Eddie Bauer’s “Nano-Care” stain-resistant pants, in glass that is shatter-resistant, and even in a Wilson tennis ball that the manufacturer claims will bounce longer. IBM is working on a prototype called Millipede that claims 20 times the storage capacity of current computer chips: Imagine stuffing 25 million pages of printed textbook onto something the size of a postage stamp. New traffic and crossing lights are examples of nanotech at work in the form of LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes.) They use 1/10^th the electricity of regular bulbs and have a lifespan of 10 to 30 years. In a few years they’ll probably light up your homes too, and much more cheaply than current lights. As an engineer, Stringfellow pioneered Hewlett-Packard’s (now known simply as HP) successful application of his brainchild – OMVPE (Organo Metallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy) – to red, orange, and amber LEDs, an application of nanotechnology that today is a billion-dollar product for HP.

Steve Blair, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the U of U, believes there’s a certain amount of hype involved in the topic, but he says it’s impossible to pinpoint what aspect of nanotechnology will turn out to be the most viable. “Ninety percent of nanotechnology will result in good fundamental research, but a lot of it is not going to pan out. But it’s the 10 percent that’s going to be important,” he says.

Though Utah is among the lowest in the nation for funding nanotechnology, a growing number of companies in the state are producing viable commercial products.

Local Faces of Nano

One local player in nanotech is BioMicro Systems. The company specializes in micro fluidics and has multiple patents for these processes, which move fluids through miniature channels thinner than a human hair. Jim Kuo, BioMicro’s CEO, hopes the technology will position the company as an important player in the fields of drug development, medical diagnosis and gene expression.

According to Kuo, when fluids move through Teflon-coated micro channels, capillary forces cause them to behave more like honey than water. Traditionally, scientists have tried to control fluid movement through these micro channels by using miniature mechanical valves, sound waves or electricity, but these have serious limitations. BioMicro’s technology, invented by chief technical officer Michael McNeely, uses tiny lasers to create micro channels and restrictions in specialized plastic for fluid to move through.  This nanotechnology is called “passive valving.”

BioMicro has applied this idea in its first commercial product, called the MAUI (Micro Array User Interface) Hybridization System, which is used extensively in gene expression analysis and was used to help identify the SARS virus. The MAUI attaches to the micro array (an etched glass slide) and allows the sample on it to mix with better efficiency. As a result, the amount of time necessary to run the experiment can be considerably less than is now required, and researchers have had 3-5 times better results.

Dean Probst, principal engineer for technology development at Fairchild Semiconductor in West Jordan, says Fairchild has been using nanotechnology for almost 10 years but has just recently begun using it in almost all of their products. Nanotechnology has allowed Fairchild to beef up the performance of their chips by digging nano-sized trenches into the surface and building more transistors in those trenches. Probst believes that the business world's call to make things “better, faster, more efficient,” will be answered by nanotechnology's ability to create smaller and smaller features. “The company that has the smallest transistor has the best product,” he says.

Remember the first time you looked at the mechanism inside an old-fashioned clock or watch, and were fascinated by the movements of the tiny gears? That's the sort of allure that nano-crafted devices hold for many researchers, says Probst, and it makes their work of building intricate structures from a palette of substances look more like art than science. On a silicon wafer, engineers create thousands of transistors by using different techniques and materials. Imagine a slice of material about 1/1,000 the width of a strand of hair. Researchers add thin layers of glass, silicon, aluminum or titanium to the material, then add a coat of photo-resist — a chemical that is sensitive to light. Next, they cover the wafer with a mask that has a certain pattern and expose it to UV light. Much like work in a photographic darkroom, they develop it in a solution that clears away the areas exposed to the UV light. They add other etchings into the material, then watch a unique design emerge: the birth of a nano structure. Some of the chips manufactured at Fairchild, West Jordan, are sent out with a personalized stamp ­– a tiny signature from a comparatively giant-sized designer, in the shape of southern Utah’s famous sandstone arches.  

The community of Taos, New Mexico recently welcomed another Utah product of nanotechnology in the form of a special kind of “hydro-mulch” called SoilSET™, that was used to help rehabilitate the soil after the Encebado fire charred 5,400 acres of their community.

Planes circled the community spraying SoilSET ™ - which looks like chocolate milk – to help bind the soil, stop erosion and keep the fire from re-igniting. The nontoxic product, made by Utah-based Sequoia Pacific Research, starts an electro-chemical reaction on the surface of soil that creates a crystal matrix to bind the soil, which in turn decreases the rate of water and wind erosion.

Traditionally, the Forest Service has covered up to 75 percent of burnt regions through scattering soil-binding clumps. But because SoilSET ™ was developed using nanotech, the actual material is much smaller — molecule-sized — and it can be sprayed, allowing more coverage, and at a reduced cost. “It’s the first time in the history of the Forest Service that they’ve been able to have 100 percent coverage by a [rehabilitation] product like this in a fire,” says Paul Clayson, CEO of Sequoia Pacific Research.          

Paying for Nanotech          

It will take more than a nano budget to seed the growth of nanotechnology and to profit from nanotech’s commercial application. “We know that it is going to be very expensive, but gigantic opportunities come with gigantic costs,” says Stringfellow.

Most of the initial funding has been federal. N.R 766, or the National Nanotechnology Research and Development Program, which Congress passed in May, seeks to funnel $2.36 billion to nanotechnology research over the next three years in the form of interdisciplinary grants.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who worked to help pass the bill, believes Utah will play an important role because of the research stemming from the state’s universities.

“Utah is well-positioned to be a significant player in nanotechnology,” he says. But Matheson believes nanotechnology is still in its gestational phase. “We have so much to learn. The main obstacle is time; we need time and good research.”

But what happens when federal funding for nanotechnology runs out?

Investments in nanotechnology by venture capitalists in the U.S. are expected to exceed $1 billion in 2003, according to the NanoBusiness Alliance, an increase from less than $100 million in 1998. But because nanotech is still in its infancy, some VCs believe involvement in the technology is too risky.

VCs typically invest in what will bring returns in three to five years, and some feel that the hype surrounding nanotechnology may lead investors in the wrong direction, when the bulk of practical application for the technology won’t come until 10 years down the road.

BioMicro’s Kuo says other obstacles that may be holding back nanotech’s growth are the need to educate other researchers on how to use resulting new products and the need to help investors assess the viability of new technologies.

“Because of the high- tech nature of our work, not very many investors are knowledgeable about the product development we are doing and may easily dismiss it. The way we have overcome this obstacle is actually developing and commercializing a product — the MAUI System,” says Kuo.

Suzanne Winters, special assistant for technology import at Batelle, a contract research development and commercialization company believes in the potential for high-tech to jumpstart Utah’s economy. She cites the lack of a strategic plan and the lack of money to back up a plan as obstacles to nanotech’s growth in the state.

“We’ve got the academic talent. What seems to be lacking is the recognition by our policymakers that research and technology will drive the economy’s health. Utah stands to lose a great deal not only in technology research, but in losing the faculty that generates that technology,” she says, noting that top researchers are being drawn to universities out of state.

Sharing best practices is also key, says Winters. “There is so much that’s going on at so many places; a lot of people are going to own pieces of technology, but people are going to have to come together to merge intellectual property in order to come up with ground-breaking technology,” she says.

Sidebar: The making of a tech revolution

Jerry Stringfellow has lived long enough to witness how certain technologies have changed our way of life. Growing up in the 1950s, he was fascinated with the discovery of radio waves, and spent all his spare time building transistor radios to catch some of those magic waves out of the sky. Stringfellow worked a paper route so he could afford to buy transistors for his radios at five bucks a shot. He never imagined that 45 years later, he would be able to pay about the same amount for a chip that held a billion transistors on it.

“That’s a revolution when the price of performance changes by a billion in your own lifetime,” says Stringfellow.

Stringfellow remembers when he was introduced to the first integrated circuit as a Ph.D. student at Stanford. He attended a seminar by representatives from Fairchild Semiconductors who presented a model of their work: a slice of silicon with not just one but five transistors on it. At the time, not even the presenters knew the potential of the multi-transistor chip.

Stringfellow believes the emergence of the integrated circuit, and its impact, can be used as a metaphor for how nanotechnology will influence the world in years to come.“Nobody knew how important this thing was, and now, almost anything we pick up is somehow related to the integrated circuit,” he says.

The invention of the integrated circuit changed everything, sparking the evolution of the computer, the Internet, cell phones, PDAs, and countless other technologies to streamline communication and simplify life. Now, even common household products like dishwashers and toasters have micro-controllers in them.

Sidebar: Making the Connections

There are some nanotechnologies running around looking for companies to bring their ideas to commercialization, but Clark Turner, business development manager for Orem-based Moxtek, believes better success can be had when existing companies seek to connect the products they are already making with nano processes.

“There’s a lot of really good and interesting technologies out there, but you have to find a niche where it applies; it’s easier to take a product that already exists and improve its performance," says Turner.

This idea of incrementally improving existing products may seem less romantic than some novel material exploding onto the scene, but it appears to be more realistic, said Turner. Moxtek for two years has been selling components for big screen televisions that were created with nano features (70 nanometers small). The process will enhance the viewing pleasure of big screen junkies, boosting contrast and brightening images. Their product will also impact displays on Palm Pilots, and other kinds of projection products.

It took a lot of start-up money to get the technology rooted: Moxtek spent $10 million over the last five years developing the device and buying equipment to create the special design, but Turner said the returns have been good. “We made several million in sales last year, and expect to make more than double that by next year.” The company’s research was initially funded by NASA but is now internally funded.