Nanotechnology

By Aditya Mittal

May 2005

© MITS Communications – This article is republished. It was first published in the June 01, 2005 edition of MITS Communications magazine. For more details on MITS refer to http://www.pilani.com/MITS
Background:

Theoretical Basis:

The laws of classical dynamics begin to deteriorate at high velocities and small scales where Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics take over, respectively. Accordingly, small particles traveling at high velocities are subject to the laws of relativistic-quantum mechanics. Amazing phenomenon begin to occur in this domain, and new technology is trying to take advantage of these phenomenon to create miraculous machines.

Nanotechnology refers to technology at the nanometer (10^-9 meters) scale. A nanometer is merely ten angstroms long where an angstrom is named after Swedish astronomer and physicist, Ångström, Anders Jonas (1814–1874), who was one of the early formulators of the science of modern spectroscopy. Ångström wrote extensively on terrestrial magnetism, the conduction of heat, and especially spectroscopy. He published a monumental map of the normal solar spectrum that expressed the length of light waves in units of one ten-millionth of a millimeter. This unit of length usually used to specify radiation wavelengths is now known as the angstrom (10^-10 meters). He discovered that hydrogen is present in the sun's atmosphere, and he was the first to examine the spectrum of the aurora borealis. Although, the diameter of atoms varies and the basic unit is taken to be the Bohr radius (5.2917725 x 10^-11 m), the diameter of an atom depending upon the element is approximately one to five angstroms. This puts from 2 to 10 atoms in a nanometer and 2000 to 10000 atoms in a micrometer. For example, there are about 3 silicon atom diameters in a nanometer.

Quantum Mechanics becomes extremely important at these atomic scales. Quantum Mechanical uncertainty begins to play a large role in our ability to determine how a nanoscale machine such as a small robotic arm will behave in certain conditions. Effects like electrons tunneling through potential barriers can form both hindrances and advantages in creating such machines. Interestingly, the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) widely used in both industrial and fundamental research to obtain atomic-scale images of metal surfaces, itself uses the quantum tunneling effect to view and manipulate nanoscale particles, atoms and small molecules and to map surfaces. The STM, first used in the mid-1980s, allowed scientists not only to see details of atomic structures, but also to manipulate those structures.

Unlike relativity, which has remained unchanged since Einstein’s formulation, quantum mechanics is still being formulated to some extent. This theory is not a result of only one person but of many people’s calculations and ongoing experiments. Alongside, other theories are also developing for describing small scale and high velocity behaviors such as Superstrings which has been quite popular in the recent years. The theoretical developments are closely correlated with recent discoveries in nanotechnology that remained unexplained by older theories. The seemingly sudden new discoveries are not a result of an impulsive idea but sequences of small experiments gradually done in labs until a refined product is seen. When the new discovery comes into the attention of thousands of physicists all of a sudden, new ideas begin to evolve, and new theories and experiments are formed. Take for example, quantum dots which are still undergoing this gradual development.

Quantum dots are tiny particles of semiconductors such as cadmium selenide that behave as if they were individual atoms. They can absorb light energy, kicking their internal electrons up to higher energy levels, and then release the energy by emitting light. A quantum dot fluoresces much more brightly than a dye molecule, making it a desirable marker especially to track the moving molecules of a living organism since an electron microscope cannot be used. This process is known as biological tagging. Now in 2004, The University at Buffalo research team led by professor T.J. Mountziaris invented a new way to synthesize quantum dots using luminescent nanocrystals made from semiconductor material. This technique enables precise control of particle size by using a microemulsion template formed by self-assembly. Then, some German scientists started blasting the quantum dots with light to create the quantum mechanical state needed to run a quantum computer, a computer that would be as small as a grain. But they couldn't consistently control that state as a result of defects formed during the process of constructing a quantum dot according to the research team at Ohio University. The team’s study is also supposed to help scientists better understand how to control the spin states of an electron and lead to the formation of a better quantum dot. In 2005, Cornell University has created 'Cornell dots' that can replace quantum dots for biological tagging, imaging and optical computing. CU dots are nanoparticles consisting of a core about 2.2 nanometers in diameter containing several dye molecules, surrounded by a protective silica shell, making the entire particle about 25 nm in diameter. The researchers call this "core-shell architecture."

Also, in May 2005, Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed that the materials used to create quantum dots can also be used to greatly improve solar cell electricity production because quantum dots can furnish as many as three electrons from one high energy photon of sunlight. When today's photovoltaic solar cells absorb a photon of sunlight, the energy gets converted to at most one electron, and the rest is lost as heat. Today’s best cells convert only about 33 percent of the sun's energy into electricity. However, NREL and NRL (Naval Research Lab in Washington D.C.) have been working together to describe a new theoretical foundation for the multiple exciton generation process that is based on certain unique aspects of quantum theory. They have shown that solar cells based on quantum dots theoretically could convert more than 65 percent of the sun's energy into electricity, approximately doubling the efficiency of solar cells. Also May 2005, Evident Technologies has begun sale of large scale commercial Indium Phosphide-based, Molecular Plated T2-MP EviTags in Deep Red Colors for Life Science Research. That is non-heavy metal quantum dots are now commercially available for biological tagging to laboratories.

Vision of Nanotechnology:

People have wanted to be rich for centuries. People have been trying to create gold ever since gold became the measure of wealth. People have also been trying to make diamonds because not only are they expensive and a display of aristocracy, but also rare, and quite useful in industrial applications such as cutting. Unlike gold, diamonds are constructed of carbon which is readily available at dirt cheap prices. If anyone could cheaply put carbon atoms together to form diamonds, he would become rich instantly. Dr. Ralph Merkle sees atoms as LEGO blocks. “Today’s manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level. Casting, grinding, milling and even lithography move atoms in great thundering statistical herds. It's like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks with boxing gloves on your hands. Yes, you can push the LEGO blocks into great heaps and pile them up, but you can't really snap them together the way you'd like.

“In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves. We'll be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature easily, inexpensively and in most of the ways permitted by the laws of physics. This will be essential if we are to continue the revolution in computer hardware beyond about the next decade, and will also let us fabricate an entire new generation of products that are cleaner, stronger, lighter, and more precise.”

In Aditya Mittal’s science fiction book Fierce Game of Foolish Geniuses: The Opening of Chess a futuristic robotic society is envisioned in which a printer would be able to print not only on paper by putting atoms of ink on it, but to put individual atoms together in any 3D configuration. In other words, a printer would be able to print a diamond given carbon atoms or even a potato if someone was hungry. In this robotic society, elements came through pipelines into a home or office just the way data comes in bits through an internet coaxial cable today. Of course, these elements were paid for by the user to the provider.

Some time back, there was an article in Science News envisioning an elevator to space – that is from ground to a space station in space. This elevator would be pulled up and down by carbon nanotubes which were claimed to have enough strength to hold up such a system. A simple google search for ‘space elevator’ will result in much more information on this subject.

In Michael Crichton’s novel Prey, there was a nanotechnological black swarm of predator robots. This was built on the swarm model developed in New Mexico. The swarm could grow and learn just like a biological population by itself. Soon enough people become the prey…

Ideas, Experiments and Research:

Molecular manufacturing

Molecular manufacturing is the envisioned construction of molecules one atom at a time, where any structure consistent with physical laws can be made at costs not exceeding the cost of the required raw materials and energy. This idea was directly seen in my printer vision. For more detailed analysis of the subject see Merkle’s articles “Molecular Manufacturing: Adding Positional Control to Chemical Synthesis” published in Chemical Design Automation News, Volume 8, Numbers 9 & 10, September/October 1993, page 1 and “Convergent Assembly” published in Nanotechnology 8, No. 1, March 1997, pages 18-22. This material is not as recent as the topics discussed here, however, is crucial to understanding the basic details of molecular manufacturing.

Assembly

The current idea of assembling an object from nanoparticles consists of using robotic arm(s) to move particles into the right positions. We wish to assemble in both serial and parallel as if there are many assembly lines. Exponential assembly, convergent assembly, and self-replication are key ideas in such an assembly. According to the people at Zyvex who are developing huge numbers of miniature robotic arms exponential assembly is “a manufacturing architecture starting with a single tiny robotic arm on a surface. This first robotic arm makes a second robotic arm on a facing surface by picking up miniature parts — carefully laid out in advance in exactly the right locations so the tiny robotic arm can find them — and assembling them.” These robotic arms are a part of MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System). Convergent assembly on the other hand is the idea that small parts can be assembled into large parts, which can be assembled into still larger parts, and so forth. Finally, self-replication is the idea that a particle can create more of itself, given the components to make it in the right positions. The idea of self-replication is built into the idea of exponential assembly as defined by Zyvex.

Carbon Nanotubes

The above image shows examples of carbon nanotube structures, including multiwalled and metal-atom-filled nanotubes. Image taken from http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/04_03.htm on May 27, 2005.

As mentioned earlier, the ability to make diamonds cheaply is desired; therefore, in the recent years much emphasis has been given to constructing compact stable structures out of carbon atoms. 1996 Nobel Prize laureates Robert F. Curl, Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley discovered the carbon structure Buckminsterfullerene, more commonly known as the "buckyball" consisting of 60 carbon atoms arranged like a ball. In the years that followed a common device for holding carbon structures became seamlessly wrapping graphitic structures around cylinders. This technique has also been applied to other elements but carbon remains most popular. These structures could be made anywhere from just a few nanometers in cylindrical diameter up to a millimeter in diameter. This allows for multifarious length-to-width aspect ratios.

Buckyball

The following passage from “The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality” by David Leonard shows us not only the strength and fast pace research of these carbon nanotubes, but also how much is expected:

The hurdle to date, Edwards said, has been the commercial fabrication of carbon nanotubes. Both U.S. and Japanese firms, among others, are ramping up production of carbon nanotubes, with tons of this now exotic matter soon to be available. "That quantity of material is going to be around well before five years time. It's not going to take long," he said.

Given the far stronger-than-steel ribbon of carbon nanotubes, a space elevator could be up within a decade. "There's no real serious stumbling block to this," Edwards explained.

"The making of carbon nanotubes is moving very quickly," said Hayam Benaroya, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers in Piscataway, New Jersey. "We're moving from the scientific stage of just developing them to actual commercial entities producing them in ton-like quantities," he said.

"Perhaps within our lifetimes we might actually see real designs of skyhooks and space tethers, these kinds of things. They may be feasible at reasonable cost," Benaroya said.

If things really do move at the pace expected by this article it would not be long before we will really be creating diamonds. Today, many firms are patenting various designs of these nanotubes such as “buckytubes” which are small diameter carbon nanotubes on which Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc (CNI) reached 30 patents this year. Designs not only vary the diameter of the tube but also the number of layers around the cylinder.

Following is the quantitative measure of some carbon nanotube properties from Discover Magazine, January 1999, page 38:

Superstrong Materials:  Embedded into a composite, nanotubes have enormous resilience and tensile strength and could be used to make cars that bounce in a wreck or buildings that sway rather than cracking in an earthquake.

Tensile Strength:  45 billion Pascal vs. 2 billion Pascal for the best steel alloys before they break

Density & Lightness:  1.33 to 1.40 grams per cubic centimeter vs. 2.7 g/cm^3 for aluminum (& 8.0 g/cm^3 for steel)

Resilience/Memory:  Can be bent at large angles and re-straightened without damage. Carbon fibers and normal metals fracture at grain boundaries (causing wrinkles, creases, dents, and breakage).

Heat Transmission:  Predicted to be as high as 6000 watts per meter per Kelvin at room temperature vs. 3320 W/m/K for nearly pure diamond or 430 W/m/K for silver. (Nanotubes have highest known heat transmission)

Temperature Stability:  Stable up to 2800 deg. Celsius (5000 deg. Fahrenheit) in a vacuum; 750 deg C in air (1400 F);

Size:  0.6 to 1.8 nanometers in diameter (Threads of nanotube fibers could be woven into a cloth or fabric.)             

Electrical Properties:  Can be varied from semiconducting to highly conducting; semiconductor material could be dull in color while highly conducting material could appear shiny and metallic.

Following is from Scientific American, January 2000:

Clearly, the numbers are different. Searching different sources we find that carbon nanotubes are about six or more times lighter than steel and 10 to 100 times stronger than steel depending upon the type of steel and carbon nanotube and exact details of measurement. But clearly, nanotubes win by a significant amount.

Photonics and Electronics

Short range fiber optics has been low-profile for the past few years while electronics has been gaining because of its ability to produce results cheaply. Fiber optics has been an expensive process of constructing tube like structures made of glass or plastic to carry photons that carry data. Due to high costs of fiber production, it is only used for large amounts of data transmission over long distances to minimize costs. It works well over long distances because photons are fast and the energy loss from the fiber is minimal. Along with this, optical fiber amplifiers can be used to restore the lost energy along the way. For imagination purposes, it is useful to realize that a single optical fiber can carry as many as 300,000 telephone calls. However, speeding techniques in electronics are moving towards exhaustion as electrons can only travel so fast through circuitry and we can only make the circuit small enough. As things move along, we might very well be forced to supplant our electronics with photonics – that is transmitting photons through the wires instead of electrons. It has been estimated that a photonic internet could be carrying 160 gigabits per second.

“If the promise of photonic technology is realized, the high-speed processing and movement of data today will seem so sludgelike, people of the future will wonder how we ever got anything done. Photonic technology is still a long way down the road but the goal is a few steps closer now.” – A Few Steps Closer to Nanoscale Photonic Technology by U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)

Scientists working with the Berkeley Lab and University of California at Berkeley, have been able to guide pulses of laser light through a variety of nanowire structures. Furthermore, they have also been able to use these nanowires and nanoribbons to guide laser light through water and other liquids which gives way to new research in micro fluidics and biology. According to Peidong Yang, a leading scientist in this lab, so far nanoscale lasers, photo detectors, and ribbons that serve as flexible sub-wavelength optical waveguides have been made and much work is happening on building the blocks for photonics. Ultimately, the desire is to integrate all these individual components together into a photonic system-on-a-chip that could be used to perform instant and detailed analyses for studies in chemistry, biology and medicine.

At Syracuse University in New York I have also been doing lab work with fabricating very thin metal film, specifically, 99.9% pure gold films about 5nm thick. We did so by using a new fabricating process to fabricate a smooth gold film at the core-cladding boundary in fiber. The process consists of depositing gold onto a clean glass rod which will form the core of the fiber, collapsing a glass tube or ampoule to create the preform, and then drawing the preform into gold cylindrical optical fiber with a drawing tower. In the process of pulling the fiber we also end up pulling the gold into a thin film. Due to quantum mechanical properties the gold changes color as it gets thinner eventually becoming gray. Also, the indices of refraction are mapped as a function of wavelength in gold films of different thicknesses such as 2.06 or 4nm. Such properties and fabrication methods of very thin films will also be extremely important in the future development of photonics.

Image Copyright © Cornell University

Cornell University researchers have also bridged electronics and photonics by developing a silicon device that allows an electrical signal to modulate a beam of light on a micrometer scale. Shown above is the SEM image of the ring coupled to a waveguide.

The development of photonics will still take some time. We still need to explore the nanotechnology door before jumping into the photonics. The systems that build the field of photonics might very well be constructed of nanotubes and other nanoscale structures. More theoretical advancement may also be needed before photonics is really applied. We started with discussing relativistic quantum mechanics but up until now we have only really dealt with quantum mechanics. That is behavior at the small scale limit, namely, the atomic scales at which we have needed to understand the behavior of electrons. However, for photons in small structures both quantum mechanics and also relativity will be important when determining time delays for various components. Due to more tedious timing calculations it might become more convenient to design asynchronous self-contained circuits rather than using system clocks as with present day computers.

The Labs and Companies:

Iomega – recently got U.S. Patent No. 6,879,556 titled Method and Apparatus for Optical Data Storage which is a nano-technology-based subwavelength optical data storage technology called AO-DVD (Articulated Optical - Digital Versatile Disc). In the future this technology is expected to lead to 40-100 times better DVD’s. This invention is a recent winner of Nanotech Briefs' Nano 50 awards which began this year. On June 7-8, 2005 a Nano2005 conference is being held at The Westin, Santa Clara, CA which is an exhibition focused on emerging business opportunities in nanotechnology.

Cornell University – much of the groundbreaking research in the field of nanotechnology has been coming from Cornell University. For just a few examples, it is here that the world’s smallest guitar (a single string seen with an SEM and a pick to pluck it with) was made sometime back, where a new kind of quantum dots was made, and also where a device to modulate light with electricity for photonics was made.

Because it will be exhaustive to continue to write about the hundreds of labs and companies rapidly discovering the field following is a list of some U.S. based units that are interested:

3i 3M A & E Technology, Inc. AAI Corporation Accumold Addx Corporation Advanced Consulting & Distribution Advanced Information Tech, Inc. Advanced Products Co., Inc. Aegis Technologies Aerotech Inc. AIAA Air Force Research Laboratory Akzo Nobel Alabama A&M University Albany NanoTech Allegis Capital Ambios Technology, Inc. American Trim Ames Center for Nanotechnology Analog Devices, Inc. Apariq, Inc. Apex Sales Group, LLC Applied MicroStructures Applied Technologies APT Army Research Laboratory Arrow International, Inc. ASML Aspen Systems, Inc. Asylum Research ATK Atlas Venture Atometric, Inc. Automated Precision Automated Process Technology AVOX Systems Inc. Azna Corp. BAE Systems Ballistic Composites, LLC Bayer Polymers Beacon Life Sciences Beacon Technology Ventures Benet Labs Bio Lab, Inc. BioPhan Technologies, Inc. BJ Services Company BlabberMouth PR Blackhawk Technical College BNP Media Boeing Booz Allen Hamilton Boston College Boston Scientific Corp. Boston University Bourns, Inc. Brisland Consulting British Consulate-General Budd, Larner Busek Co., Inc. Business Communications Co. Career & Technology Ctr. At Fort Osage Carmichael Honda Carnegie Mellon University Cascade Microtech Case Western Reserve Univ. Caterpillar Inc. CCBC CENAT Centennial Associates, LLC Center for Applied Radiation Research Chromavision Church & Dwight Co., Inc. Ciba Specialty Chemicals City of Dresden, Office of Economic Dev Cline Innovations, LLC Coakley & Williams Construction Inc. College Park Industries Computer Aided Engineering Assoc. Computer Sciences Corp. COMSOL, Inc. Conversion Technologies International Cook Urological Cookson Electronics Corona Design Coty Inc. Coventor, Inc. Cross Automation CSTL CTC Custom Manufacturing & Engineering Cuyahoga Plastics CVI Laser, LLC Davidson Institute Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Science and Technology Agency DEKA Research & Development Department of Economic Development Dept. of Business & Economic Dev. DFJ New England Fund Dickey-John Corporation Disruptive Innovations & Technologies Dolphin Venture, LLC Draper Laboratory DuPont Company DuPont Corporation, R&D Planning Eaton Coporation Eikos Inc. Electrical & Computer Engineering ELF Lab Eneri Inc. Engelhard Surface Technologies ENSCO, Inc. Enterprise Ireland Estee Lauder Ethicon Endo-Surgery Evaporated Metal Films Corp. Falcon Systems Engineering Corp. Federal Mogul Corporation FEI Company Fidelity Investments Filtration Group Fiore Industries, Inc. Flo-Tork, Inc. Ford Motor Company Fort Osage CTC Foster Corp. Foster-Miller, Inc. Fujitsu Computer Products GE Energy GE Global Research Gems Sensors, Inc. General Atomics General Dynamics Geo-Centers, Inc. George Mason University Georgia Power Germane Tool Corp. GGB Gillette GMA Industries Goodrich Corp. GP:50 Ltd. Greenough Communications GT/Microelectronics Research Ctr. Guide Line Industries, Inc. Hardinge Inc. Harris & Harris Group, Inc. Harvard University Headwall Photonics, Inc. Health Policy & Program Consults Henkel Highland Capital Partners HJC Hoeganaes Corporation Holographix, LLC Honeywell Hope Global Hosokawa NanoParticle Tech Ctr. Hyperion Catalysis International IATAC IBM Research ILC Dover Illume, Inc. Information Gatekeepers, Inc. Infotonics Technology Center Inframat Inspired Research, LLC Inst. For Sys Res & Dept of Materials Science InstroTek, Inc. Integrated Nanosystems, Inc. Integrated Nano-Technologies, LLC Intel Corp. IntelliSense Software Corp. Intradigm Invensys Climate Controls Isomet Corporation ISR, Inc. ITN Energy Systems, Inc. Itochu International, Inc. ITT ITW J K Lees Consulting J.M. Coull, Inc. Janney Montgomery Scott, LLC Jet Propulsion Laboratory JETRO Houston JMI, Inc. John Deere John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Johns Hopkins University Johnson & Johnson Joslyn Designs Inc. Kamatics Corporation Kazak Composites, Inc. Kemet Technologies Corp. Key Technologies Konarka Technologies, Inc. Laservy Corporation Leader Tech, Inc. Lehigh University LG Chem Lockheed Martin Corporation Logic Enterprises USA, Inc. Lord Corporation Los Alamos National Laboratory Luna NanoWorks Lux Capital LuxDelta Products Pte Ltd Lynntech, Inc. M&W Zander Madison Research Corp. MagCap Engineering, LLC Malden Mills Ind. Inc. Marine Corps Logistics Base Marketing Assessment Marotta Controls, Inc. Maryland Dept. of Business & Economic Development Maryland Industrial Partnership Maryland Technology Dev. Corp.

Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Matheson Tri-Gas McClellan Automation Systems McGraw-Hill MeadWestvaco MEMS & Nanotechnology Exchange Mercedes-Benz USA Meyer Tool & Mfg., Inc. Micro-Coax Midlands Technical College Millennium Chemicals Mission Research Corp. MIT MIT Space Nanotechnology Lab Mitre MKS Instruments, Inc. Moog Inc. Moxtek, Inc. mPhase Technologies MTS Nano Instruments MTS Systems Corporation Muniz Engineering, Inc. Muons, Inc. NANO Necessities, LLC Nanobac Pharmaceuticals NanoComp Technologies Inc. NanoConductors, Inc. Nanocor, Inc. NanoDynamics, Inc. NanoOpto Corporation Nanoparticle Innovations Nanotech Briefs Nanotechnology Network Nano-Tex Nanoverse, LLC Nantero, Inc. NASA NASA Ames Research Center NASA Glenn Research Center NASA Goddard Space Flight Center NASA IL Commercialization Center NASA Johnson Space Center NASA Langley Research Center NASA Office of Aerospace Technology NASA Spinoff NASA Tech Briefs Nathaniel Electronics National Institute of Standards & Technology National Institutes of Health National Science & Technology Council National Security Agency National Technology Transfer Center Natl Nanotechnology Coordination Office Naval Research Laboratory Navy (NAVAIR) NGC NHGRI/NIH Niagara Mohawk NIOSH NKA Nokia Reasearch Center NonWoven Technologies, Inc. Nordson Corporation Northeastern University Northrop Grumman Corp. Northrop Grumman Newport News Nothern Virginia Technology Council Office of Naval Research Office of Tech Commercialization Office Of Technology Partnerships Office of Transnational Issues OmniGuide Communications Omnova Solutions Optical Research Associates Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, LLC Osram Sylvania, a Siemens Co. OTI Owens Corning Oxford Instruments P.I. Physik Instrument LP Parker Hannifin Paul Brown, Inc. PCC Penn United Technology Penske R&D Performance Coating Corp. PHARAD PM-Soldier Warrior Polaris Venture Partners Polylnsight, LLC Polyone Potomac Interface, Inc. Precitech Inc. Progression Systems Protiveris Python Injection, Inc. Quantachrome Instruments Quantum Logic Devices Quantum R&D Raytheon Reckitt Benckiser Refining Systems, Inc. Reichert Inc. Research Support Instruments Right Management Consultants RNT Robert Bosch Tool Corp. RockPort Capital Partners Rockwell Automation Rockwell Scientific Company RTI Rutgers University SAIC Salvona Technologies SAPPI Fine Paper SAS Investors SAXONY Schick Wilkinson Sword Schlumberger SCRA/ARDI Seldon Laboratories, LLC Sepracor, Inc. Siemens Siemens Westinghouse Signature Science SK USA, Inc. Smaltec Intetnational SMCI Smith Barney Sogang University SolidWorks Corporation Sonoran Scanners Southwest Nanotechnologies, Inc. SP & S SpaceVest Spherosils LLC SPIE SSD Labs State Department State of Tennessee Stevens Institute of Technology Strategic Informatics Corp. Stryker Stryker Orthopaedics SUNY SUSS MicroTec Swales Aerospace Symbol Synergy Innovations, Inc. Technical Fibre Products, Inc. Technical Manufacturing Corp. Technology Commercialization Center Technology Partnerships Division TechSolve, Inc. TEEX/TED TEGAM Inc. Teledyne Microelectronic Tech Textron Systems Corp. The Coca-Cola Company The Daniels Group The Gillette Company The Maryland Technology Development Corp. The Mitre Corporation The Photonics Center The Timken Company ThermoGear Inc. Theron, Inc. Thin-Films Research, Inc. Titan Corp. Titan Corporation Tofts Design Inc. Toucan Capital Corporation TOYOBO America, Inc. Toyota Motor Mfg. NA Trimtape, Inc. Trykor, Inc. U of Illinois U.S. Dept. of Energy, Kansas City Plant U.S. Air Force U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, ARS U.S. Navy U.S. Senate Uniglobe Kisco, Inc. United Defense, L.P. United States Surgical United Technologies Research Center Univ. of Massachusetts Lowell University of Dayton Research Inst. University of Florida University of Maryland University of Massachusetts Lowell University of Wisconsin-Madison US Army Corps of Engineers US Army Tacom-Ardec US Department of Energy US Environmental Protection Agency US Surgical USAF Human Systems Prog Office USC/ISI East USDA-Agricultural Research Service USRA/Division of Space Life Sciences Valeo Electrical Systems Varian Biosynergy Varian, Inc. VEDP Veeco Instruments Verizon Technologies Vertex Pharmaceuticals Vibro-Acoustic Consultants Victoria's Secret Virginia Tech Dept of Physics VTI Technologies W.L. Gore & Associates Washington Mills Electro Minerals Wet Labs, Inc. Williams Advanced Materials Wolf-Gordon Workplace Systems, Inc. WPI Bioengineering Institute Yankeetek Partners, Inc. Zyvex Corporation

Journals and References:

Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation – MIT Tech Review is a monthly science magazine that covers a variety of topics currently in research including nanotechnology. Its cover price is $59.88 per year.

IEEE Transactions On Nanotechnology - The scope of the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology will include the physical basis and engineering applications of phenomena at the nanoscale level across all areas of science and engineering. It is a quarterly magazine and the price is $549.63 per year.

Journal Of Nanoscience And Nanotechnology – A monthly magazine that consolidates research activities in nanoscience and nanotechnology into a single, and unique reference source. Articles cover synthesis of nanostructures, atomic characterization, bioassemblies, nanoprobes, quantum factors and more. The price for a year’s subscription is $530.82.

International Journal Of Nanotechnology - The journal includes original articles on all subjects and topics related to nanotechnology, along with review papers, conference reports, essays, notes, news, and comments. This is a quarterly journal at $474.07 per year.

Nanotechnology Law & Business – Quarterly magazine at $256.55 per year.

Nanotechnology – Monthly magazine aimed at promoting the dissemination of research and improving understanding amongst the engineering, fabrication, optics, electronics, materials science, biological and medical communities. Yearly price is $480.11.

Journal Of Biomedical Nanotechnology – Quarterly journal priced at $272.07 per year.

Nanomedicine : Nanotechnology Biology And Medicine – Quarterly journal priced at $84.74 per year.

• http://www.rootburn.com/portfolio/nano/ - a very nice presentation of nanotechnology basics – a must read for the audience who enjoyed this article
• http://www.nanodynamics.com – website of NanoDynamics, Inc. which is a manufacturer of nanomaterials
• http://www.nanotechbriefs.com/ – a new online nanotechnology and MEMS magazine
• http://www.physorg.com – a great site for physics and technology news with many great nanotechnology articles that are very up to date
• http://www.zyvex.com/nano/ - concepts of molecular nanotechnology and lots of links
• http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html - See this website for lots of links to nanotechnology sites, past and future events, nanotechnology products and so forth.
• http://www.cnanotech.com/pages/resources_and_news/3-4_newspress_releases.html - website of Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc