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Nanotechnology: small revolution.

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Nanotechnology is already' attracting considerable investment by both governments and private industry worldwide. When perfected, advanced nanotechnology will streamline and reduce manufacturing costs in significant ways. The result will be a $1 trillion sales market for nanotech components in the next 15 years.

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Investors are looking at the new technologies that will be the next critical driver of economic growth. Information technology has offered astounding global growth over the past few decades. Biotechnology has developed from its nascent research beginnings into incredible commercial applications and social benefits. The next force that we expect to have a global tectonic effect is, ironically, so small that it cannot be seen with the human eye.

Nanotechnology is used to rearrange molecules so that essentially every atom can be put in its most efficient place. Ralph Merkle, Ph.D., of the Georgia Institute of Technology describes it this way: "Manufactured products are made from atoms, and the properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal, we can make diamond. If we rearrange the atoms in sand and add a few other trace elements, we can make computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt, water, and air, we can make potatoes."

3i, a venture capital group, defines nanotechnology as "any application of science that deals with elements between 100 nanometers and a tenth of a nanometer in size in which size is critical to the application's ultimate purpose." One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Put another way, there are 1 million nanometers in 1 millimeter. For perspective, the width of a human hair is approximately 80,000 nanometers.

This emerging technology has already attracted considerable investment: More than 30 countries have launched public nanotechnology research and development programs. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that government R&D funding grew fivefold between 1997 and 2002, to an estimated $2 billion per year. In the private sector, large multinational firms such as IBM, Dow Chemical, L'Oreal, Hitachi, and Unilever, as well as numerous startups have increased their nanotechnology research initiatives.

George Whitesides, a prolific Harvard chemist, reckons that nanotechnology is now about halfway through the list of discoveries needed for the field to reach maturity. He believes that it will develop much as biotechnology has--through intensive research and experimentation that yield totally new ways of doing things. We are only now beginning to see the wide uses and effects for this nascent technology Jack Uldrich and Deb Newberry's recently published book The Next Big Thing is Really Small put it this way:

"This is not to say that nanotechnology is a far-off, fuzzy, futuristic technology It is not. It has already established a beachhead in the economy. The clothing industry is starting to feel the effects of nanotech. Eddie Bauer, for example, is currently using embedded nanoparticles to create stain-repellent khakis. This seemingly simple innovation will impact not only khaki-wearers, but dry cleaners, who will find their business declining; detergent makers, who will find less of their product moving off the shelf; and stain-removal makers, who will experience a sharp decrease in customers. This modest, fairly low-tech application of nanotechnology is just the small tip of a vast iceberg--an iceberg that threatens to sink even the 'unsinkable' companies."

Perhaps one day there really will be tiny, self-propelling structures that seek out and destroy cancer cells inside the human body. Nanotech could eventually change...

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