Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Nanotechnology Breakthroughs by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

 
In chronological order:
 
1981 - IBM scientists invent the  Scanning Tunneling Microscope, giving ready access for the first time to the nanoscale world of individual atoms and molecules on electrically conducting substrates.
1986 -The  Atomic Force Microscope is invented by IBM and Stanford University scientists, quickly becoming the workhorse of nanoscience, providing general purpose imaging and manipulation in the nanometer realm.
1986 - IBM scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer win the  Nobel Prize in Physics for the Scanning Tunneling Microscope.
1988 - IBM scientists observe  photon emission from local nanometer-sizes areas stimulated by a scanning tunneling microscope, allowing phenomena such as luminescence and fluorescence to be studied on the nanometer scale.
1989 - IBM Fellow Don Eigler is the  first to controllably manipulate individual atoms on  a surface, using the STM to spell out "I-B-M" by positioning 35 xenon atoms, and in the process, perhaps creating the world’s smallest corporate logo.
1991 -IBM scientists demonstrate an  atomic switch, a significant milestone on the road to the eventual design of electronic devices of atomic dimensions.
1993 – Scientists at IBM and NEC  independently discover single-wall carbon nanotubes and the methods to produce them using metal catalysts.
1996 - IBM scientists extend STM manipulation techniques to  position individual  molecules at room temperature for the first time.
1996 - The  world's smallest abacus is created out of 10 atoms by scientists at IBM, another major milestone in engineering at the nanoscale.
1998 -  IBM scientists and partners discover a molecular wheel, which shows promise for making nanoscale mechanical gears and motors.
 2000 - IBM and university researchers develop nanomechanical sensors using  tiny silicon  fingers to detect minute quantities of biochemical substances and to recognize specific patterns of DNA.
2001 - IBM's "constructive destruction" method overcomes major hurdle for building computer chips beyond silicon with a  method to separate semiconducting and metallic  nanotubes to form a working transistor on the nanoscale
2001 - IBM scientists unveil the  world's first single-molecule computer circuit, carbon nanotube transistors transformed into logic-performing integrated circuits, a major step toward molecular computers.
 
2002 - IBM researchers build world's smallest operating computing circuits using a  molecule cascade, wherein molecules move in a manner analogous to falling dominos.
2003 -- Scientists from IBM, Columbia University and the University of New Orleans demonstrate the first  three-dimensional self assembly of magnetic and semiconducting nanoparticles, a modular assembly method that enables scientists to bring almost any materials together.
2003 - IBM scientists demonstrate the  world's smallest solid-state light emitter, suggesting that carbon nanotubes may be suitable for optoelectroinics.
2004 -- IBM scientists develop a new technique called “spin-flip spectroscopy” to study the properties of atomic-scale magnetic structures. They use this technique to measure  a  fundamental magnetic property of a single atom -- the energy required to flip its magnetic  orientation.
2004 – IBM scientists measure the tiny  magnetic force from a single electron spin using an ultra sensitive magnetic resonance force microscope, showing the potential of vastly extending the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
2004 -- IBM scientists  manipulate and control the charge state of individual atoms. This ability to add or remove an electron charge to or from an individual atom can help expand the scope of atom-scale research. Switching between different charge states of an individual atom could enable unprecedented control in the study of chemical reactivity, optical properties, or magnetic moment.
2004 -- IBM scientists make breakthrough in  nanoscale imaging -- the ability to detect the faint magnetic signal from a single electron buried inside a solid sample is a major milestone toward creating a microscope that can make three-dimensional images of molecules with atomic resolution.
2005 -- Using nanoelectronic fabrication technologies, IBM researchers create a tiny device that  slows the speed of light, representing a big advance toward the eventual use of light in place of electricity in the connection of electronic components, potentially leading to vast improvements in the performance of computers and other electronic systems.
2006 -- IBM researchers build the  first complete electronic integrated circuit around a  single “carbon nanotube” molecule, a new material that shows promise for providing enhanced performance over today’s standard silicon semiconductors. The achievement is significant because the circuit was built using standard semiconductor processes and used a single molecule as the base for all components in the circuit, rather than linking together individually-constructed components. This can simplify manufacturing and provide the consistency needed to more thoroughly test and adjust the material for use in these applications.
2006 -- IBM scientists develop a powerful new technique for  exploring and controlling  atomic magnetism, an important tool in the quest not only to understand the operation of future computer circuit and data-storage elements as they shrink toward atomic dimensions, but also to lay the foundation for new materials and computing devices that leverage atom-scale magnetic phenomena.
2006 – In a study investigating the fundamentals of molecular electronics, the  quantum  mechanical effects of attaching gold atoms to a molecule were elucidated. The work demonstrated that it is not only possible to control the atomic-scale geometry of a metal-molecule contact, but also its coupling strength and the phase of the orbital wave function at the contact point.
2007 -- IBM demonstrates the first-ever manufacturing application of "self assembly" used to create a vacuum -- the ultimate insulator -- around nanowires for next-generation microprocessors for its  airgap chip technique.
2007 - IBM researchers in collaboration with scientists from the ETH Zurich demonstrate a new, efficient and precise technique to  “print” at the nanoscale.
2007 - IBM unveils two  nanotechnology breakthroughs as building blocks for atomic structures and devices: Magnetic atom milestone brings single-atom data storage closer to reality; single-molecule switching could lead to molecular computers.
2007 - IBM researchers develop magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to visualize nanoscale objects. This technique brings  MRI capability to the nanoscale level  for the first time.
2008 - IBM scientists, in collaboration with the University of Regensburg in Germany, are the first ever to measure  the force it takes to move individual atoms on a surface.
2009 – IBM Research builds  microscope with 100 million times finer resolution than current MRI, extending three-dimensional MRI to the nanoscale.
 2009 - IBM scientists reach a landmark in the field of nanoelectronics: the development and demonstration of novel techniques to  measure the distribution of energy and heat in  powered carbon nanotube devices. By employing these techniques, IBM researchers have determined how the energy of electrical currents running through nanotubes is converted into heat and dissipated into collective vibrations of the nanotube's atoms, as well as surface vibrations of the substrate beneath it.
2009 - IBM scientists in collaboration with the University of Regensburg, Germany, and Utrecht University, Netherlands, for the first time demonstrate the ability  to measure the  charge state of individual atoms using non contact atomic force microscopy.
2009 - In an effort to achieve energy-aware computing, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and IBM plan to build a  first-of-a-kind water-cooled  supercomputer that will directly repurpose excess heat for the university buildings. The system is expected to save up to 30 tons of CO2 per year, compared to a similar system using today's cooling technologies.
 
2009 – IBM launches new research effort for  next generation electric energy storage, exploring battery technologies to drive electric vehicle adoption and make energy grids more efficient.
 

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Nanotechnology History: A Non-technical Primer

Earlier an article on history of nanotechnology http://nanosciencetech.blogspot.com/2008/08/history-of-nanotechnology_11.html was published. In this article of Adam Keiper MD, The New Atlantis, few more points are elaborated.


Today, in the young field of nanotechnology, scientists and engineers are taking control of atoms and molecules individually, manipulating them and putting them to use with an extraordinary degree of precision. Word of the promise of nanotechnology is spreading rapidly, and the air is thick with news of nanotech breakthroughs. Governments and businesses are investing billions of dollars in nanotechnology R&D, and political alliances and battle lines are starting to form. Public awareness of nanotech is clearly on the rise, too, partly because references to it are becoming more common in popular culture-with mentions in movies, books, video games, and television.

Yet there remains a great deal of confusion about just what nanotechnology is, both among the ordinary people whose lives will be changed by the new science, and among the policymakers who wittingly or unwittingly will help steer its course. Much of the confusion comes from the name "nanotechnology," which is applied to two different things-that is, to two distinct but related fields of research, one with the potential to improve today's world, the other with the potential to utterly remake or even destroy it. The meaning that nanotechnology holds for our future depends on which definition of the word "nanotechnology" pans out.

From Feynman to Sunscreen

Although a few scientists had done related work earlier, nanotechnology didn't really get going until the second half of the twentieth century. Credit for inspiring nanotechnology usually goes to Richard Feynman, a brilliant Caltech physicist who later won a Nobel Prize for "fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics." In an after-dinner lecture ("There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom") delivered on the evening of December 29, 1959, Feynman proposed work in a field "in which little has been done, but in which an enormous amount can be done in principle."

"What I want to talk about," Feynman said, "is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale." Feynman described how the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica could be written on the head of a pin, and how all the world's books could fit in a pamphlet. Such remarkable reductions could be done as "a simple reproduction of the original pictures, engravings, and everything else on a small scale without loss of resolution." Yet it was possible to get smaller still: if you converted all the world's books into an efficient computer code instead of just reduced pictures, you could store "all the information that man has carefully accumulated in all the books in the world … in a cube of material one two-hundredth of an inch wide-which is the barest piece of dust that can be made out by the human eye. So there is plenty of room at the bottom!" He declared that "the principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom"-in fact, Feynman saw atomic manipulation as inevitable, "a development which I think cannot be avoided."

Research in the direction Feynman suggested didn't begin immediately, although the next few decades brought sophisticated new tools and techniques for manipulating matter at the atomic level. One early demonstration of this power came in 1990 when a team of IBM physicists revealed that they had, the year before, spelled out the letters "IBM" using 35 individual atoms of xenon. In 1991, the same research team built an "atomic switch," likely to be an important development in the future of computing.

Another breakthrough came with the discovery of new shapes for molecules of carbon, the quintessential element of life. In 1985, researchers reported the discovery of the "buckyball," a lovely round molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms. This led in turn to the 1991 discovery of a related molecular shape known as the "carbon nanotube"; these nanotubes are about 100 times stronger than steel but just a sixth of the weight, and they have unusual heat and conductivity characteristics that guarantee they will be important to high technology in the coming years.

But these exciting discoveries are the exception rather than the rule: Most of what passes for nanotechnology nowadays is really just materials science. Such "mainstream nanotechnology," as practiced by hundreds of companies spending billions of dollars, is merely the intellectual offspring of conventional chemical engineering and our new nanoscale powers. It is already being incorporated in consumer products: some lines of sunscreens and cosmetics, some stain- and water-repellent clothing, some new paints, a few kinds of anti-reflective and anti-fogging glass, and some tennis equipment. In short, mainstream nanotechnology is an interesting field, with some impressive possibilities for improving our lives with better materials and tools. But that's just half the story: there's another side to nanotechnology, one that promises much more extreme, and perhaps dangerous, changes.

Molecular Manufacturing

This more radical form of nanotechnology originated in the mind of an M.I.T. undergraduate in the mid-1970s. Eric Drexler, who went on to obtain a Ph.D. from M.I.T., realized that the biological "machinery" already responsible for the full diversity of life on Earth could be adapted to build nonliving products upon command. Molecule-sized machines, modeled after those found in nature, could be used to manufacture just about anything man wished.

Drexler, who began to develop these theories even before he'd heard of Feynman's lecture, first published his ideas in a 1981 journal article. Five years later, he brought the notion of molecular manufacturing to the general public with his book Engines of Creation. An astonishingly original work of futurism, Engines of Creation pointed out how molecular manufacturing would revolutionize other areas of science and technology-leading to breakthroughs in medicine, artificial intelligence, and the conquest of space. Drexler refutes every technical objection he can anticipate, explaining how such phenomena as quantum uncertainty and thermal vibrations don't make molecular manufacturing impossible. It was also in Engines that Drexler introduced the term "nanotechnology"-a reference to the nanometer, one-billionth of a meter-to describe this approach to molecular manufacturing, although the term is now also used for the more mundane applications (cosmetics, tennis balls, etc.) described above.

To shore up his technical arguments for the feasibility of his vision, Drexler further expanded on his ideas in the world's first nanotechnology textbook. Nanosystems (1992), a dense volume that grew out of a class he taught at Stanford, is crammed with equations and diagrams and designs for molecular machines, and it has gone far to put the theory of molecular manufacturing on sound technical footing-although scientific debate about the achievability and the best routes to developing nanotechnology has continued.

In the past decade, theorists have begun to flesh out the details of how nanotechnology might be used in manufacturing and medicine, although it is unclear how soon any of this will be possible. Some analysts have estimated that major breakthroughs in molecular manufacturing are at least three decades away; others have suggested that major progress might occur in the next five years.

Controversy and Policy

Since 2000, awareness of nanotechnology among environmental activists, regulators, and lawmakers has been on the rise. Environmental organizations have expressed fears about the potential ecological and health consequences of mainstream nanotechnology, and have called for increased research into safety of nanoparticles.

The Drexler version of advanced nanotechnology has also been the subject of public fear, largely centered on the notion that nanotechnology could spiral out of control and convert all life on Earth into "gray goo." Drexler, who originally introduced this apocalyptic prospect in Engines of Creation, has since repeatedly distanced himself from it-but gray goo retains its grip on the public imagination.

There are other serious reasons to be worried about the development of nanotechnology, including the risk of severe economic disruption; the possibly dehumanizing effects of using nanotechnology on ourselves; and the potential criminal, military, or terrorist use of advanced nanotechnology. A few organizations are paying full-time attention to these concerns, including the Foresight Institute (established in 1986) and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (established in 2002).

Public policy discussions have barely begun to reflect those long-term concerns. Although some agencies in the U.S. government have been involved in nanotechnology since the 1980s, federal funding of nanotechnology research did not begin in earnest until the late 1990s. In 2000, the National Nanotechnology Initiative was established to coordinate the government's work in nanotechnology; soon, federal spending on nanotechnology is scheduled to cross the $1 billion-per-year mark. Along with the increased funding has come a government commitment to investigate the "social, economic, health, and environmental implications" of nanotechnology. As public interest continues to grow, and as scientific progress make advanced nanotechnology seem ever more attainable, policymakers are likely to increasingly turn their attentions to the promise and peril of nanotechnology.

Monday, August 11, 2008

HISTORY OF NANOTECHNOLOGY




(1) The first use of the concepts in 'nano-technology' was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. He described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed.


(2) In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction.

(3) In the year of 1965, in a breakthrough observation by Gordon Moore, it was noticed that silicon transistors were undergoing a continual process of scaling downward. This was famously known as Moore’s Law.





(1) Then in the year of 1974 the term “NANO-TECHNOLGY” comes. It was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi. In his paper he defined it as: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule."
(2) Also in 1974, one atom thick deposition technique was developed patented by Dr. Tuomo Suntola and co-workers in Finland.

(3) Thereafter, Dr. K. Eric Drexler an American engineer promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena in the 1980’s. He actually conceptually explored the idea of handling the individual atoms and molecules. Drexler's vision of nanotechnology is often called "Molecular Nanotechnology" (MNT) or "molecular manufacturing," and Drexler at one point proposed the term "zettatech" which never became popular.