Exploring the nanoworld: nanotechnology is one ET that is too small to ignore.

Emerging technology (ET) is a fun place to visit, but you may not want to live there. ET captures the excitement of the moment, but living on the edge has its hazards. The leading edge can become the bleeding edge that's drained life out of many a start-up. Although ET is often overblown and superhyped, this column will focus on the good, bad and the ugly of ET to deliver a no spin, low hype zone of advanced technology.

The Winner Is ...

A top 10 countdown of the most important ETs necessarily includes nanotechnology. The U.S. government has placed a bounty of nearly $1 billion on this ET. Don't believe it? Check out National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI, www.nano.gov) and place your bets in the techno-lottery. And, the number one ET spot goes to "nano." Why? The answer: It is the starting point of the tiniest building blocks--atoms.

Nano-What?

The nanometer is one billionth of a meter (1 x [10.sup.-9] m). Since a mil is 25 microns, one rail is equal to 25,000 nanometers. A human hair has a diameter of about 3 mils, making it a whopping 75,000 nanometers thick. We would need to stand a hair on end and slice it into 75,000 equal parts to get 1 nm. Nanotechnology resides in that world where particles, crystal structures and components have dimensions of 100 nm or less.

But the technology is about much more than small size. Otherwise, gas molecules, like oxygen, would qualify since they are even smaller than a nanometer. One popular definition defines the technology as the examination, manipulation, transformation, production and control of matter, energy and information at the nanometer-scale (1-100 nm) using precise individual atom processes instead of traditional chemical and biological mass reactions.

This definition excludes the most popular nanotechnology process: chemistry. In fact, many nano-materials are made by chemical mass reactions. Some want to define nanotech as an atom-by-atom or bottom-up methodology that excludes highly successful top-down methods like those used for making semiconductor chips. However, building nano-structures one atom at a time would take a million years. Atoms are pretty darn small, and a gram of matter contains 6.022 x [10.sup.23] atoms (Avogadro's Number).

One nano-evangelist's answer was to make the first nano-machine a robot that will build a robot that will build a robot and on and on. Nice going if you can ever build the first nanobot. The atom-by-atom approach can be debated by the nano-machinists and sci-fi writers while we top-down technologists make some nano-products. And don't forget that microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) use top-down processes, including chemical etching. The nano-boys are already trying to claim MEMS as their own by calling it NEMS, even though features sizes are beyond the nano definition range.

But should our chip, packaging, circuit and assembly readers even care about nanotechnology? Yes, because we can put it to work.

Materials

Many commercial products, such as sun block, use nano-materials. While nanoparticles fall within the [less than or equal to] 100 nm definition, their size makes their behavior much different than similar micro-particles. Unusual optical and physical characteristics can result. One example is titanium dioxide, the common white paint pigment that prevents degradation by ultraviolet light in sunshine. If you want to make sunscreen, the opaque whiteness would be a problem. If we produce this pigment in the nano-particle range, the material is transparent to visible light, but still blocks UV light. New nano-substrates, materials with crystalline structures in the nano-scale range, will eventually move into circuitry and packaging to provide unusual electrical, mechanical and thermal properties.

Parts

We can produce three-dimensional (3-D) molecular shapes at the nano-scale, including spheres and tubes, known as carbon nano-tubes (CNT)--the most interesting and valuable nano-parts. CNTs are made of connected carbon atoms produced by high-energy chemical processes (Figure 1). But CNTs can be 5,000 times longer than they are wide, making them superb conductive and reinforcing fillers. The CNTs, and longer versions called ropes, could eventually be used to make ultra-high-density circuit boards. How about a CNT nano-via that can be as small as 1 nm (0.001 micron) in diameter (Figure 2)?

[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

Electronics Devices

Best of all, we can use the CNTs to make active electronic devices. IBM used a CNT to build a tiny transistor, and AT&T made a CNT triode amplifier. We can also make nano-wires that emit light, creating the world's smallest lasers (Figure 3). Perhaps nanotechnology will transition us into a non-silicon semiconductor world based on carbon chemistry, like the human brain.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

A Nano-Future?

With the U.S. and others throwing big bucks into the nano-pot, something will certainly happen for the future of nanotech. We are moving into the dimensions of quantum mechanics--a Twilight Zone of matter. Not only will weird and wonderful materials and devices be produced, new principles will be discovered. And this is where the excitement lies for our number one ET. You just can't be sure what will happen.

Ken Gilleo is a general technologist for Cookson Electronics. Foxboro, MA; [phone]; TheET [e-mail].