L.A.'s TINY Revolution.

Science being conducted at the molecular level is going to bring us a whole new universe of micro-gadgets that will make James Bond's toys seem tame by comparison

Forget biotech and wireless. They're so yesterday. The technology of tomorrow is nanotechnology, and it's going to be big, researchers and investors say, precisely because it is so small.

In Los Angeles, nanoscience is burgeoning. Government- and corporate-sponsored labs on university campuses are poised to make L.A. the capital of the small and, according to Gov. Gray Davis, "the next Silicon Valley."

"The future is here," said Marth Krebs, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy who became director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA in February. "We can't imagine what the science will bring, but we believe it will be as significant as what we've seen with personal computing in the last 20 years. The kinds of things we'll find out will change the world. That's a sure thing."

The prefix "nano," which derives from the Greek word for dwarf, means one-billionth. And it is generally used in conjunction with a basic unit of measure, such as a meter or a second. A comma in this article, for example, spans about one million nanometers.

Nanoscience is science conducted at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create large structures with completely new molecular organization.

"We have the tools to actually see, touch and move atoms and molecules," Krebs said. "We can interact with them and we can put them into assemblages. After we make these things at the molecular level, we can start to paint them in ordered arrays on semiconductors, and they become molecular switches that can turn into very tiny, fast computer storage."

Scientists and a growing number of corporate executives and legislators are salivating over the possibilities, and a global competition is on to deliver nanotechnology.

"The Internet has changed the world, economically and politically, but compared to what's coming in the field of nanoscience, we ain't seen nothing yet," said Christine Peterson, president of the Palo Alto-based Foresight Institute, a nonprofit educational organization that formed in 1986 to monitor nanotechnology. "The future will be so different from human history that we can barely imagine it." Nanotechnology is, however, difficult to imagine because it is still a nebulous field. There is no killer application yet, and most scientists agree that marketable products are at least 10 years out.

"Nanoscience is hot everywhere and has all the hype at universities now, but nobody has real, working nanotechnology products yet," said Sheffer Meltzer, post-doctoral researcher at USC's Laboratory for Molecular Robotics.

At USC's lab, Meltzer and about 15 researchers have developed imaging tools and software that allow the team to manipulate objects on a nanoscale. Developing that kind of instrumentation is crucial before scientists can begin fabricating even the most primitive nanostructures.

The products that nanoscience could spawn are limited only by the imagination. The most enticing is a faster, more efficient, less expensive and, of course, much smaller computer. For example, a few gigabytes, which is enough memory to hold a thousand high-resolution photographs or a thousand 200-page books, could be packed onto a device the size of a wristwatch.

There is also the potential for materials that are 10 times stronger than steel but a fraction of the weight, which could be used to make land, sea, air and space vehicles lighter and more fuel-efficient. There could also be medicines that target the molecular errors that cause disease, as opposed to treating the symptoms of disease.

Some forward-looking scientists believe they could end up with creations that have lifelike behaviors, or "nanobots." A jet could be covered with a paint containing nanoscale particles that could instantly reconfigure to mimic the jet's surroundings, creating a jet that's indistinguishable from the sky -- in a word, invisible. Or, bricks and other building materials could detect weather conditions and respond by altering their inner structures accordingly, vastly improving the energy efficiency and comfort of buildings. Even more fantastic, a synthetic nanoscale drug or device could be sent on a mission to seek out and destroy malignant cells inside the human body.

Fantasy has become reality at CNSI, a joint effort between UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. To position Southern California in the global race for nanotech, Gov. Davis selected CNSI as one of three research institutes in the state to receive $100 million in tax dollars. The goal, Davis said when he made the announcement last December, is to duplicate the collaboration between academia and industry that led to the Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, the state's power crisis and slowing economy have put this funding commitment in jeopardy, at least temporarily. But the UC research institutes appear to have broad support in the Legislature and from Gov. Davis' office, so the funding is likely to eventually come through.

"Who knows what new enterprises will be created or what medical breakthroughs will result because of our institutes," Davis said in last year's State of the State Address. "But this we do know: Breakthroughs will occur. And I want to make sure they occur right here in California."

The institute at UCLA has been targeted to receive $25 million a year for four years to construct two buildings and labs. UCLA and UCSB have so far lined up pledges of $50 million more from private industry. Using miniaturized instruments that help manipulate and measure the properties of nanostructures, the lab at UCLA, led by chemist James Heath, has proven the ability to make a switch out of a single molecule that could be turned off and on -- like a transistor. That breakthrough paves the way for development of molecular electronics for a wide range of information technologies.

The lab at CNSI on the UCLA campus, where about 100 student researchers are busily toiling, is not the only place in the country trying to make a computer using nanoscience, but it is the only lab that actually has switches.

"We're way ahead of everyone else, largely because we have brilliantly engineered molecules that were custom designed for this task," Heath said. "We have a component of bottom-up manufacturing that's molecular based. When you do molecular manufacturing, you can design and generate specific control over the structures you make."

In other words, you can make them perfectly. Health's achievements have made him a star of the scientific community.

It seems that every summer his lab announces a breakthrough in nanoscience, and then a beaming Heath ends up on the cover of science journals and newspapers like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He's even been featured in Vanity Fair. This coming summer, Heath said, will be no exception. Not surprisingly, the pioneering work at CNSI has seized the attention of private industry. Hewlett Packard, for example, is among the leading investors in CNSI and is actively involved with the Heath lab.

"This is going to be very important research in the first few decades of this century," said Philip Kuekes, a computer scientist at Hewlett Packard. "As we try to construct things at the nanoscale, all kinds of disciplines come into play. It's so interdisciplinary that no one company or academic department has the resources to attack the problem. It's a job too big for just Hewlett Packard to do." Hewlett Packard is after what Kuekes refers to as "truly personal computers," or computers that can, for example, be woven into the fabric of clothing.

"In the last few decades, computers have gone from being as big as my house to the sitting on my lap," Kuekes said. "That same degree of shrinking is available to us again, according to the laws of physics. As a major computing company, it's going to be very interesting when computers become smaller."

Rockwell Science Center, the Sherman Oaks-based spinoff of defense contractor Rockwell International, is also a sponsor of CNSI, and is hoping to bring nanotech products to market.

"This technology has so much uncertainty that most private industry will stay away for a while until things become more clear," said Rockwell Science Center director Derek Cheung. "But we want to engage with them now. It fits perfectly with our business model, which is to be a link between academia, industry and product application."

Many international corporations -- IBM, Lucent, Hitachi, Motorola, Mitsibushi and others -- are involved in nanotechnological research, but most keep their findings secret. Heath's motivations, however, have little to do with wearable computers or invisible jets.

"Our mission is to discover how to increase the standard of living at reduced energy consumption," he said. "That is the metric and what will tell us if we're successful. It's not about making nanobots or gizmos that whiz through the air."

However, Heath does have an eye toward spinning off nanotech companies in L.A.

"It would he nice to have some mechanism in Southern California for nurturing nanotech startups, like a business park with the kinds of facilities that you find in Silicon Valley," he said. "We could potentially set up a company jointly with Hewlett Packard. It would be my preference to do that in L.A."

Nanoscience research at the California Institute of Technology, led in part by physicist Michael Roukes, is at the forefront of developing techniques to create three-dimensional structures and machines at the nanoscale. The Caltech approach, which it calls "nanomachining," creates three-dimensional nanostructures that can move. The school's state-of-the-art instruments provide the eyes and fingers required for nanostructure measurement and manipulation.

"As we enter the 21st century, nanotechnology will have a major impact on the health, wealth and security of the world's people," according to a statement issued by a committee of scientists that met in 1999 at the National Science Foundation to assess the future of nanotechnology. "It will be as significant in this century as antibiotics, the integrated circuit and manmade polymers."