All things ten^(-nine)
TinyTechIP has a listing of the top 10 patents in nanotechnology issued over the last year including some basic patents to the memristor, graphene electrodes, and carbon nanotube filaments for lightbulbs.
Last month a symposium was held at UC Berkeley on a new type of nanoscale circuit element called the memristor which could have a big impact in areas such as non-volatile memory and neuromorphic computing. Youtube has video of the conference available here and a six minute primer available here.
An article in the current issue of Nanotechnology Law and Business (available free: here), spun-off from an April post here on nanoREV explores the patent challenges of graphene based inventions. While several companies are now jumping on the graphene bandwagon, especially for its promising uses in electronics, each is hoping to be the first to publish a major breakthrough. As per usual, IBM pushes the envelope yet again.
In a recent letter published in arxiv.org, an open-access and electronic archive of scientific papers, researchers at IBM have measured the switching speeds of a graphene-based transistor. By reducing the gate length from 500nm to 150nm, the maximum cut-off frequency increased from 3 to 26GHz. With a maximum clock speed of 26GHz, the team proclaims to effectively have established the state of the art and indicate the possibility of carrier mobilities of 2000 cm2/V-s with a gate length of 50nm. Keep your eyes peeled.
Interestingly, to isolate the graphene for their transistors, the team at IBM used the now seemingly obvious “mechanical exfoliation” method (i.e. shaving small flakes onto adhesive tape, but you can’t just say that in a DARPA funded paper), an example of which can be viewed here.
Anyone familiar with the novel Atlas Shrugged will recognize some similarities between the events of the novel and the current economic predicament. In the novel the devaluation of the ideas of innovators in comparison to the needs of the masses eventually leads to economic decline followed by government bailouts followed by further economic decline. Continued requests for bailouts from the auto industry seem to follow the same path. The question is what innovations will the auto industry produce to earn any assistance? While, like most large corporations, there is much development in improving the existing systems in automobiles the major innovations seems to mostly be emerging from smaller companies such as Tesla Motors or foreign companies such as Hyundai and Toyota (e.g. a search of the number of patents using the term “hybrid vehicle” finds 33 to Hyundai, 32 to Toyota but only 8 to GM). So, based on their track record of innovation it would seem that a bailout to the U.S. would be a bad investment and a better investment would be in the smaller companies developing more innovative automotive technologies. Some areas where nanotechnology can contribute to this include:
Nanoparticles for improved automotive coatings - Nanovere Technologies has developed some new scratch resistance and self-cleaning coating materials applicable to automotive coatings.
Nanomaterial Enabled Battery, Solar Cell and Fuel Cell Power - Alternative energy sources produced by companies such as A123Systems (lithium batteries), NanoSys (fuel cells/solar), Nanosolar (solar), and Innovalight(solar) provide nanomaterials for enhanced energy production as potential alternatives to enable non-fossil fuel or hybrid power solutions.
Neuromorphic computing for driverless automobiles - Inspired by DARPA’s Grand Challenge there is a drive to create true AUTOmobiles removing the necessity of a human driver with the potential to reduce accidents caused by human error, increase efficiency of drive time and energy use, and providing freedom to the passenger to perform other activity without worrying about driving or directions to a particular destination. While this is still in the early stages the developments of neuromorphic and reconfigurable computing architectures by Hewlett-Packard (using memristor crossbars) and Nantero (using carbon nanotube mechanical switches) have the potential to advance this effort.
The memristor was listed by TIME magazine as one of the top inventions of 2008 and could revolutionize non-volatile memory by replacing transistor based memory cells with a new type of nanoscale resistance switch. In addition, there has been some speculation that the memristor may be a key ingredient to a new type of neural network that could have an impact on electronics on the same level (or perhaps much greater) than the invention of the transistor. This Friday there is a symposium being held at Berkeley discussing potential applications which could unveil details on how this development will effect electronics and the semiconductor industry in the next few years.
In the article “Alternative Nanoelectronics: A Comparative Analysis,” published in the December 2006 article of Nanotechnology Law and Business, D-Wave was noted as one of the top four companies producing new paradigms of electronics in the 21st century with their focus being on quantum computing. In the last several months D-Wave has taken some steps forward in the production of multiple quantum bit computing which may eventually provide competition with conventional supercomputers. D-Wave’s blog gives some information and video from a recent talk discussing their research and hurdles in development available at this link.
Advancements in both neuroscience and microelectronics over the past decades has brought about new ways for computer interfacing with the human brain. Neuroscience has brought about enhanced understanding of the working of the brain via electroencephalography and has applied such understanding to neuroprothetics offering various ways of repairing damage caused by stroke or trauma. Meanwhile, microelectronics continues to be miniaturized to nanoscale dimensions while more biocompatible materials are being incorporated into semiconductor research.
The applications of brain-machine interfaces created by such developments have so far been mostly limited to the medical realm. However, new companies such as Emotiv and Neurosky are beginning to make related technology available for video gaming controllers using electrodes to detect the emotional state of the brain to control a game character or object. It is not too difficult to see that refinements of this type of technology can be adapted to control various other electronic devices.
Some recent developments of nanotechnology in this area include the use of carbon nanotubes as coatings for electrodes to improve biocompatibility or using carbon nanotubes as a nanoelectrode probe as described in this patent application from Tsinghua University.
With the recent decline of the stock market, the reduction of lending, and the dearth of IPOs in 2008 things may look bleak for emerging technologies such as nanotech. But, while near term projections may look bad, in the long term economic decline could actually be extremely beneficial to technological developments involving nanomaterials. Here are three reasons why:
1. Less resources force innovators to look for simpler more economical solutions.
Most invention is incremental in nature and build upon decades of earlier developments. For example, the techniques to manufacture integrated circuits have been developed over about 50 years and while the improvements in these techniques have been significant and have led to cheaper and more efficient electronics, the manufacturing cost and complexity have increased at a similar pace in accordance with Moore’s 2nd law. Semiconductor and electronics companies faced with a rapid decline in capital may be forced to look for dramatically different approaches to fabrication in order to stay in business. It is very likely that nanomaterials and nanolithographic techniques may play a key role in such new fabrication.
2. Nanotech. start-ups will be forced to focus on applications rather than on pure materials.
With less venture capital to go around it is likely that investment will go to those companies having business plans with clearly identified markets and applications. Start-ups lacking such direction will be forced to reprioritize or go out of business. While harsh in the short term this could be a good thing in the long run leading to new market creation.
3. The fall of the stock market will weaken older, public companies allowing newer, non-public companies a competitive advantage.
Companies not relying on public stock have a strategic advantage and more freedom to operate than public companies. Meanwhile older, public companies which need to answer to shareholders will be forced to compromise and may be more willing to deal with newer companies offering cost-cutting solutions offered by nanomaterials. In addition, in good economic times, distributors may have no desire to work with new companies offering cost reduced products due to longstanding relationships with more established companies. However, when the economy declines to a sufficient degree the distributors may reprioritize and give more weight to cost reduction than customer relationships offering a window of opportunity to newer competitors.
When most people think of nanotechnology the first thing to come to mind may be an image out of the movie Fantastic Voyage or of the theoretical “nanorobots” from Michael Crichton’s novel Prey. Similarly the topics of robotics and virtual reality are often first thought about in terms of images from popular science fiction movies. However, companies such as iRobot and Emotiv are beginning to demonstrate the feasibility of things once limited to science fiction. While iRobot has initially focused on niche applications such as automated vacuum cleaners, the same technology developed to navigate their automated vacuums over uneven carpet may soon find use in automated vehicular control systems offering a future of driverless cars. Similarly, Emotiv has started off with a few niche applications in video games controlled based on an array of electrodes on a players headband. The underlying technology behind such “thought-controlled” electronics can potentially create an entirely new market of electronics.
The same potential for market creation exists for many nanomaterials based companies but an easy error to make is to initially focus on larger markets rather than the small niche markets having the potential for large growth. For example, in electronics many nanomaterials are proposed for new designs of non-volatile memory, sensors, and flat-panel displays. While nanomaterials can offer various improvements in performance in these applications, they all represent crowded markets with entrenched players. The key to success of many nanomaterial based companies (and the economy in general) will be the identification of the smaller niches within the existing markets offering a platform for expansion and the eventual creation of new markets. For example, instead of trying to create a nanomaterial based memory to replace all non-volatile memory a better strategy would be to focus on a better memory specific for FPGAarchitectures. Instead of creating nanomaterials to enhance the sensitivity of all types of existing sensors a better strategy would be to focus on finding ways of using nanomaterials for sensors in a specific application (e.g. biocompatible devices). Instead of making nanomaterials to enhance the optical properties or emission efficiency of various types of displays a better strategy would focus on what new applications of the display can be be provided by nanomaterials (e.g. wearable displays, printable displays, etc.)
While a bailout plan is being debated in Congress in response to the recent financial meltdown of the housing markets, it is questionable whether the short term relief provided to Wall Street will be worth the increased government control of the economy. Ultimately economic recovery is more likely to come from the creation of new industries and new markets and the research into new materials related to nanotechnology may be key to creating such new markets. Some examples include:
Lithium Ion Batteries
Nanostructured materials could bring about cheaper, more efficient batteries for hybrid vehicles. The filing of an IPO by A123 Systems could lead to additional movement in this direction and ultimately decrease reliance on a fossil fuel economy.
Flexible Electronics
Displays, Solar Cells, and Sensors may each be formed on plastic or other pliable substrates using semiconductor nanowire deposition technologies being developed by Nanosys. This could ultimately result in displays incorporated in clothing, sheets of solar cells as cheap as wallpaper, and biocompatible implantable electronics.
Non-volatile RAM
Nantero and Hewlett Packard are both working on implementing new non-volatile memories based on nanowire crossbars (HP) or nanotube ribbons (Nantero). This could eventually be competitive with flash memory with higher information density.
Neuromorphic Computers
The design of conventional computer architectures separates the memory unit and the processing unit which can lead to delays required for the transferring of information between the memory and processor. However, some designs are in the works based on the memristor recently developed by HP which integrate memory and processing in the same circuit providing for a new type of computer architecture more adaptive to variations and having more capability in tasks such as pattern recognition useful to robotics and interactive video applications.
