Scientific American Topic - Nanotechnology

The Next 20 Years of Microchips: Pushing Performance Boundaries (preview)

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST

In 1975 electronics pioneer Gordon Moore famously predicted that the complexity of integrated-circuit chips would double every two years. Manufacturing advances would allow the chip’s transistors to shrink and shrink, so electrical signals would have to travel less distance to process information. To the electronics industry and to consumers, Moore’s Law, as it became known, meant computerized devices would relentlessly become smaller, faster and cheaper. Thanks to ceaseless innovation in semiconductor design and fabrication, chips have followed remarkably close to that trajectory for 35 years.

Engineers knew, however, they would hit a wall at some point. Transistors would become only tens of atoms thick. At that scale, basic laws of physics would impose limits. Even before the wall was hit, two practical problems were likely to arise. Placing transistors so small and close together while still getting a high yield--usable chips versus defective ones--could become overly expensive. And the heat generated by the thicket of transistors switching on and off could climb enough to start cooking the elements themselves.

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Nano-Risks: A Big Need for a Little Testing

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST

A decade ago the great worry about nanotechnology was that it could quite literally destroy the planet. As Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy warned in his essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” self-assembling nanobots could potentially spread out of our control (Mis-)programmed to replicate ad infinitum, these subsentient bots would spread across the landscape as a gray goo of devastation, consuming the earth and every unlucky creature who called it home.

Nowadays we can only wish that our planet-dooming scenarios were so far-fetched. Our existential worries revolve around the all too immediate problems of global warming and disease, and nanotechnology--incorporated into improved solar panels, wind turbines or drug delivery mechanisms--could, if anything, emerge as an important tool to fight these threats.

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Nanotech Group Targets Energy Security

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:10:00 EST

Lockheed Martin Corp. is joining forces with a new trade association to promote the commercialization of innovative clean-energy technologies.

The NanoAssociation for Natural Resources and Energy Security (NANRES), which launched yesterday, plans to work on developing and commercializing nano-projects that focus on alternative domestic energy sources, with the goal of strengthening the country's resource security. It has members in the defense, clean energy, nanotechnology , finance and environmental sectors.

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Carbon Nanotubes Turn Office Paper into Batteries

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST