- G K Moinudeen
Executive, CII

• Harnessing science of the very small
  Anand Parthasarathy
  http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/08/04/stories/2005080400311500.htm
  India's research edge may help it to stay ahead in the global race to exploit nanotechnology
  
  
  
  EQUIPPED TO EXPLORE: Micro electronic profiling system at the
  Veeco-India nanotechnology laboratory, Bangalore.
  
  HOW DOES the colour of the peacock's feather explain the exciting new world of nanotechnology? Only President Abdul Kalam, with his unmatched flair for simplifying science, could think of the connection.
  
  Walking in the Mughal Gardens of Rashtrapati Bhavan, he was struck by the brilliant colours of the feathers sported by dancing peacocks. The long lasting colours come from nano materials coated on the feather, and they defract light to give us the rich colours.
  
  This was the President's way of beginning a major address last year, to Indian Naval officers of the Weapons and Electronic System Engineering Establishments (WESEE). His theme: India's future lies in nanotechnology.
  
  Huge world market
  The world market for nanomaterials, nanodevices and nanobiotechnology is worth over 100 billion dollars, he said. Nanotubes made out of carbon can create super strong materials. Tomorrow's computers will use the technology for ultra dense memories, and nanobiomedical sensors will revolutionalise drug delivery systems, Dr. Kalam added.
  
  His suggestion that India was ideally placed to exploit her rich resources in nanotechnology was not lost on the government of the day. Eight months later, the Union Budget created a national mission in nanotechnology. C.N.R Rao whom President Kalam credits with pioneering nanoscience research in India announced in Bangalore last month, that four new nanoscience centres would be established in the country this year, adding to the eight already established in the last two years.
  
  Prof. Rao was speaking at the inauguration of the newest nanoscale research facility — the Veeco-India Nanotechnology Laboratory established at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, in Bangalore.
  
  The lab was made possible by generous inputs from the US-based Veeco Instruments, a leading supplier of instrumentation to the nanoscience community.
  
  Instrumentation placed in the new lab include the latest in Veeco's range of Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs), Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (STMs), and a number of other optical profiling and measuring instruments, which will allow Indian researchers to visualise at sub-nanometre resolutions.
  
  Veeco is already a major supplier of metrology and process equipment to the semi-conductor, data storage and biotech industries. And their Executive Vice President John Bulman was confident that placing these cutting-edge tools in the hands of Indian scientists would make this country a serious contender for leadership in the nanospace.
  
  Outsourcing research
  In another interesting development, the U.K based Cientifica, a leading provider of nanotechnology information and consultancy services announced earlier this week that it would be outsourcing some crucial research tasks in this frontier arena, to India-based partners, including three national research institutions.
  
  Lay members of the public might be confused at the frequency with which the `nano' tag is being invoked by anybody who wants to foster an image of up to the minute technology.
  
  The prefix nano comes from the Greek word, which means dwarf. It is used when talking of an order of magnitude, which is one-billionth of the standard. For example, one nanometre is one billionth of a metre. This is approximately the length of 6 atoms placed side by side or the width of a single strand of DNA. The thickness of a human hair is between 50,000 and 100,000 nanometres.
  
  Tighter packaging
  The term nanometre crops up most frequently these days when referring to the tighter and tighter packaging of transistors on a computer chip. Currently, most consumer chips like the Pentium are made to a manufacturing tolerance of 90 nanometres; in other words, this is the gap that separates two electrically-conducting lines.
  Two years ago, this gap was 130 nanometres. Next year, it will be down to 60 nanometres and so on, effectively increasing the number of active devices in a matchbox-size slab of silicon to nearly 100 million.
  
  Flowing from these nanometre measurements is nanotechnology — a technology which enables the means to construct or use, something on a nanoscale. The industry understands nanotechnology to mean handling or controlling parts smaller than 100 nanometres in width.
  
  Nanotubes, the other over-used buzzword, means tubes that are cylinders with a hollow centre, with nanoscale dimensions. The commonest application is carbon nanotubes, which exhibit unique electrical properties and great strength.
  
  One reason why nanotechnology seems to be everywhere is that carbon nanotubes can tremendously boost the strength of a variety of products from automobile tyres to tennis balls, and materials for space travel.
  
  A self-contained manufacturing system known as molecular manufacturing is one offshoot of nanotechnology. Scientists expect that molecular manufacturing at the level of a molecule using nanoscale techniques is less than 10 years away.
  
  It may then give rise to what are being called `tabletop factories' where materials 100 times stronger than steel or computers using a million times less power than today, can be fabricated in very small spaces.
  
  It is hardly surprising that such nanomaterials are proving fascinating for the world's military-scientific establishments. Indeed, this is one of the fears held out by think-tanks like the NewYork-based Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology ( www.crnano.org) .
  
  Tiny mobile robots
  The centre warns that taken to its logical conclusion, one could build a variety of smart materials like tiny mobile robots, which can be produced in millions and sent in advance of armies to descend on enemy terrain like so many locusts. Michael Crichton, first broached the possibility of a cloud of nanoparticles programmed to behave like predators, in his 2002 novel Prey.
  
  Warriors skilled in the ancient Malabar art of Kalaripayattu, use one weapon with care and respect: the coiled flexible sword, or `urumi'.
  
  Handled carefully, it can dispatch dozens of opponents, but one false move and you could end up chopping your own limbs. Nanotechnology may well turn out to be 21st century's `urumi'. A powerful tool — but only if used right.
  
  
• Nanotechnology to provide portable genetic risk detection
  http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=5675
  
  A state-of-the-art portable biosensing device based on micro- and nanotechnologies will empower doctors to rapidly and accurately forewarn patients of their genetic risk of developing diseases such as cancer. Currently being developed by the IST project OPTONANOGEN, a prototype of the system will initially be used to detect mutations of the BRCA1 gene that are responsible for between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the incidence of breast cancer in women. The final system, however, could be used to detect virtually any genetic anomaly as well as proteins linked to viruses, chemical contamination in food or water pollution.
  
  “There are a broad variety of applications for this system, although the main market is in biomedicine,” explains OPTONANOGEN coordinator Laura Lechuga at the National Microelectronics Centre (CNM) in Spain. “Though commercial biosensing systems exist they are larger and designed to be used in laboratories. We are the first to develop a fully integrated system on a small scale in this field.”
  
  The final device will be roughly the size of a human hand, allowing it to be used in doctors’ surgeries to determine the genetic predisposition of a patient to certain diseases in a matter of minutes. That compares to the hours or even days it can take to carry out the same analysis in a laboratory, which is generally only used to test high risk groups such as women with a family history of breast cancer.
  
  To detect genetic mutations the OPTONANOGEN system uses an array of 20 microcantilevers coated in nucleic acid that react when they come into contact with a DNA sample displaying the genetic anomaly. The sample is injected into the device via a microfluidic header and the deflection of the cantilevers – by as little as 0.1 to 0.5 nanometres – is picked up by a photodetector array based on the reflection of light off the cantilevers from Vertical Cavity Surface Emission Lasers (VCSELs).
  
  “We’ve patented both the microcantilever set up and the optical detection system and we are due to take out a third patent on the microfluidic header, which is unique in that it uses individual inlet and outlet paths for each cantilever rather than one for the whole array, something that has never been achieved before,” Lechuga says.
  
  The cantilever array and microfluidic header are due to be low-cost components that would be disposable if used for medical analysis but which could be cleansed and reused for other applications.
  
  After evaluation trials later this year, a commercial variant of the system is likely to be produced within one or two years by Sensia, a 15-month-old spin-off company from the CNM.
  
  Source: IST Results http://istresults.cordis.lu/
  This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
  
  
• Solar Energy and Nanotechnology for Wastewater Treatment
  http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=1237
  
  Researchers at The University of South Australia (UniSA) are developing a unique treatment for wastewater that guarantees improved water quality over existing treatments without relying on expensive chemicals.
  
  Improving the quality of treated wastewater from sewage treatment plants for reuse is becoming more important than ever in Australia due to dwindling water resources, according to Dr Bo Jin, Director of UniSA’s Water Environment Biotechnology Laboratory.
  
  “The poor quality of treated wastewater has limited its use for agriculture and aquaculture,” Dr Bo Jin said.
  
  “The last stage of any water treatment is to remove micro-organisms. Currently we use chlorine as the disinfectant but, even after treatment, the water still contains organic compounds. Chlorine removes the micro-organisms but reacts to the organic pollutants, producing disinfection by-products that are biologically undegradable and toxic and can’t be removed from the water. When transferred to the eco system, they can cause serious health consequences if used in agriculture and other industries.
  
  “This growing problem is of particular concern to the United Nations, where close attention is being paid internationally to organic pollutants, which cannot be removed economically – but a solution is on the way,” Dr Jin said.
  
  UniSA researchers are developing a single stage treatment that can remove biological and chemical contaminants in the treated wastewater from sewage treatment plants.
  
  The new solar nano-photocatalytic wastewater treatment process can replace a chlorination disinfection step as a tertiary treatment process to disinfect the micro-organisms and at the same time remove the organic compounds, making the wastewater suitable as a water resource.
  
  “Normally micro-organisms are used to break down large organic compounds but, because these compounds are biologically undegradable, we have to use another form of energy to break them down. Our energy comes from UV sunlight in association with photocatalysts. Energy generated from the photocatalyst cell reaction can kill micro-organisms and break down the undegradable compounds, resulting in clean water that can be used for an extended range of agriculture and aquatic uses – and it won’t damage the eco system,” Dr Jin said.
  
  “The other good news is that this treatment process will be very cost effective because the solar photocatalysts can be recovered and reused. They use cheap energy from the sun,” he said.
  
  Dr Jin recently won a Federal Government Australian Research Council Linkage Grant of $285,000, with additional financial commitment from industry partner Australian Water Quality Centre, to further develop this novel process, looking at water quality objectives of technical reliability and economic and environmental sustainability.
  
  http://www.unisa.edu.au
  Posted 12th August 2005