Philosophy and Themes in Nanotechnology

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Philosophy and Themes in Nanotechnology

• Eugene H. Kim
• Department of Physics
• University of Windsor
• collaborators
• S. H. Eichhorn (Chemistry, U. Windsor)
• J. Gauld (Chemistry, U. Windsor)
• X. Nie (Materials Engineering, U.
  Windsor)

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Medicine
CAT scan
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Medicine
current state of the art Detect 109 cancer
cells.
What if Detect minute amounts of cancer cells.
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Medicine
What if Detect minute amounts of foreign
material.
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Medicine
Radiation therapy
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Medicine
What if Target only the disease.
Administer a small dosage directly to the disease.
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Electronics
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Electronics
What if Transistors which are 100 to 1000
times smaller than current transistors.
source
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island
Circuits which can build themselves.
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Nanotechnology
Philosophy Build from the bottom up.
Fabricate structures atom by atom (or molecule by
molecule) with fundamentally new properties
and/or functions.
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Length Scales
1 nanometer one billionth of a meter
(10-9 meters)

• Gate length of
• a transistor
• 130nm

• Diameter of a human hair
• 100,000nm
• Protein
• 50nm

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Funding
Over 5 billion worldwide in government funding.
USA National Nanotechnology Initiative
National Nanotechnology Initiative as a top
Administration Priority Presidents
Committee of Advisers on Science and
Technology 2005 budget nearly 1.5 billion
toward nanotechnology

• Canada
• Laboratories of the NRC
• Universities
• National Institute for
• Nanotechnology (Alberta)
• 120million for 5 years

Other major players United Kingdom, Germany,
France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Taiwan, China,
Korea, Japan
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Multidisciplinary
NANOTECHNOLOGY
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Biological Systems
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Molecular Electronics
Circuits utilizing molecules.
molecule tiny resistor and capacitor
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molecular transistor
molecule
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Molecular Electronics

• sensors
• Presence of foreign materials affects transport
  through the device.

source
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molecule
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Molecular Electronics

• Molecular Electronics Devices

• Biological Systems

Use molecular electronics to study biological
systems.
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Study Biological Systems

• Can we monitor DNA transcription?

source
drain
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Summary
Nanotechnology
Philosophy Build from the bottom up.

• Multidisciplinary
• Physics
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Mathematics
• Engineering