Philosophy and Themes in

Nanotechnology
 Medicine
CAT scan
 Medicine

current state of the art:

Detect 109 cancer cells.

What if…
Detect minute amounts of
cancer cells.
 Medicine
What if…
Detect minute amounts of
foreign material.
 Medicine
Radiation therapy
 Medicine
What if…
Target only the disease.

Administer a small dosage

directly to the disease.
Electronics
 Electronics
What if…
Transistors which are ~100 to 1000
times smaller than current transistors.
VG

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island

Circuits which can build themselves.

 Nanotechnology
Philosophy
Build from the “bottom up”.

Fabricate structures atom by atom

(or molecule by molecule) with
fundamentally new properties
and/or functions.
 Length Scales
1 nanometer
= one billionth of a meter
(10-9 meters)

•Gate length of
•Diameter of a human haira transistor
~ 100,000nm ~ 130nm
•Protein
~ 50nm
 Funding
Over $5 billion worldwide in
government funding.
USA
Canada
National Nanotechnology Initiative
• Laboratories of the NRC
“… National Nanotechnology Initiative
•Other major
Universities players
as a top Administration Priority…”
•United Kingdom,
National InstituteGermany,
for
President’s Committee of Adviser’s
France, Switzerland,
Nanotechnologyon Science Netherlands,
and Technology
(Alberta)
Taiwan, China,
$120million Korea,
for$1.5 Japan
5 years
2005 budget: nearly billion
toward nanotechnology
 Multidisciplinary

Physics
Chemistry Biology

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Engineering Mathematics
Biological Systems
 Molecular Electronics
Circuits utilizing molecules.
molecule: tiny resistor and capacitor

molecular transistor

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molecule
 Molecular Electronics
sensors
Presence of foreign materials affects
transport through the device.

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molecule
 Molecular Electronics

Biological Molecular
Systems Electronics
Devices

Use molecular electronics to

study biological systems.
 Study Biological Systems

Can we monitor DNA transcription?

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 Summary
Nanotechnology
Philosophy
Build from the “bottom up”.

Multidisciplinary
•Physics
•Biology
•Chemistry
•Mathematics
•Engineering