The third annual
Wasatch Front Materials Expo - Presented by the Utah Chapter of SAMPE
Wednesday February 27th from 4:00 pm until 8:30pm
No RSVP required!
Admission is FREE!
Contact: Jay Schmidt
nanoDay –
The Leonardo--and the
Contact: jandrade@utahsciencecenter.org
nanoUtah’08 conference will be
held on Oct 16-17 at Huntsman Cancer
Institute,
Theme – “nanoMedicine – bridging the gap” .
Funding
Opportunities:
COE 2008-09
Solicitation is now open for proposals:
As you know, the Utah Centers of Excellence program
has been updated for 2008-09 to provide grant funds to companies,
whether startups or existing firms, which license a technology developed at one
of
COE home page HTTP://goed.utah.gov/COE/index.html
From NSF:
Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering – Deadline May14 2008
Emerging Models and Technologies for Computation
(EMT) - Full Proposal Deadline Date: March 13, 2008
Global News:
Europe
boosts industrial research in Nano-electronics
Network for Swedish
nano research receives further boost
Taiwan to allot NT$23
billion for nanoscience, nanotechnology R&D
India's Fab City
investment to top $7 billion as focus moves to solar
European Commission
sponsors study on regulating nanotechnology in ...
China Plans
to Surpass the US in Nanotech Development
US News:
FDA needs to systemically
collect vital nanotechnology data ...
Administration
Strategy For Nanotechnology-Related EHS Research
U of Oregon dedicates nanotechnology
lab
NASA MidSTAR-1 puts nanotechnology
in space
UAlbany
to lead nano research consortium
Journal and Book:
New Updated
Edition of 'The Physics and Chemistry of Nanosolids ...
Nano-Products:
MII
tips nano-imprint for 32-nm apps
Windshield
wipers replaced with nano coatings
MIT creates gecko-inspired
bandage
Research News:
Nanotechnology may
provide a way to deliver drugs to cartilage to ...
Nano
Scaffold Developed To Rebuild Nerve Damage
Clean
water from nanotechnology
Water disinfecting
powder uses nano-coating
Proteins covalently attached
to carbon nanotube tips provide new ...
Nanotechnology
fiber optic boost
Bacterial Infections
Diagnosed Using Nanotechnology
Scanning probe tip arrays for
denser, faster, cheaper memories ...
Nano
particles strengthen fluids
Nanotechnology-based
self-cleaning fabrics
Nanotechnology in
clothing harvests energy from the wearer’s movements
Nano
capsule developed to fight cancer
Business:
Nokia
Morph concept: flexible nanotechnology for the future
Nanosys and Sharp Expand
Development Agreement for Nanotechnology ...
Nokia,
University of Cambridge launch nanotechnology concept
UMD
seeks benefits from nano fibers
Oncor Fights Copper Wire
Theft With Nanotechnology
Analytical
Nano buys Newton Instrument for 247000 stg
Ecology
Coatings awarded fifth US patent for nanotechnology ...
Start-up says nanotechnology
will keep food from spoiling
SBI Capital Markets to set
up a USD 100 million venture capital fund
Articles &
Reports:
Nanotechnology-based
chicken feed?
Report
measures impact of nanotechnologies in treating cancer and ...
Top-down nanotechnology
reaches downward
Nano-Risks:
Risks of nanotechnology
remain uncertain
Tests on
sunscreen nanoparticles 'reassuring'
Conference:
1st
Annual Conference on Nanotechnology Law, Regulation and Policy
Awards:
John Weaver from Birck Nanotechnology
Center to get 2008 IEST ...
Education &
Outreach:
SOURCE: Nano.Cancer.Gov
- News for February 2008
New Nanotube Findings Give Boost to Potential Biomedical Applications
Carbon nanotubes have shown real promise as highly accurate vehicles for
delivering antitumor agents into malignant cells, but a dearth of data about
what happens to the tubes after they discharge their medical payloads has been
a major stumbling block to progress. [ read more ]
Nanotechnology Advances Brain Cancer Detection and Therapy
Brain cancer is one of the most aggressive and lethal of malignancies, made
even more difficult to treat by the fact that most anticancer drugs have a hard
time even getting to the tumors. [ read more ]
Targeted Dendrimer Advances in Preclinical Studies
Although a variety of nanoparticles continue to show promise for improving
cancer imaging and therapy, regulators and drug developers are concerned that
these delivery systems may prove difficult to manufacture on a consistent
basis, which is key for any agent designed for use in humans. [ read more ]
Fluorescent Nanoparticles Image Tumor Marker in Animals
Since 2004 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved three
new-generation anticancer therapies that target epidermal growth factor
receptor (EGFR), a protein that is greatly overexpressed on certain types of
tumors, including some forms of colorectal and lung cancer. [ read more ]
Microfluidics, Nanoparticles Drive Novel Cancer Detection Schemes
Early detection of tumors is one of the Holy Grails of cancer research, an
achievement that would greatly improve cancer therapy and prognosis. [ read more ]
SOURCE: Nanotechnology.com
Nanotech Interview
Dr. Placid
Placid Ferreira Interview
Dr. Placid Ferreira is a Professor of
Engineering at the
Dr. Placid Ferreira is integrating
heterogeneous nanoscale technologies to create a plethora of new and
improved commercial products.
Tell us about yourself.
What is your background, and on what projects are you currently working?
I am a professor of
mechanical engineering at the
Tell us about Nano-CEMMS.
The center is currently
focused on manufacturing at the nanoscale. It is primarily funded by the
National Science Foundation (though industrial sponsorship of its research is
on the rise) and is exploring how nanoscale fluidic and ionic transport can be
exploited as the basis of patterning and assembly processes with nanoscale
resolution. Such transport phenomena offer the possibility of exquisite control
and selectivity and high-efficiency.
Together these phenomena can enable a paradigm for manufacturing at the
nanoscale that is versatile enough to deal with several materials, has
potential for scaled-up manufacturing and can also complement conventional
high-vacuum, top-down fabrication technology. The materials versatility, and
complementary nature of the processes we are developing, should enable
heterogeneous integration with nanoscale resolution and allow us to create a
new product and capability space with various materials, dimensional scales,
function, form-factors.
What specific
applications could emerge from this nanoscale integration?
There are many, but we are
looking at the types of applications that involve the integration of many functions.
For example, lab-on-a-chip type applications require fluid handling, mechanical
actuation, sensing (optics and or electronics) and readout, signal processing
and computation. The material sets needed and the micro/nano fabrication
techniques used for them are quite incompatible with each other. We see an
opportunity here for the use of the processes emerging from the Center to
enable this kind of heterogeneous integration. So our Center has a testbed
application underway on combinatorial chemistry on a chip. This lab-on-a-chip example is really
indicative of a discernable shift in product realization strategies being
employed across a wide spectrum of products. Rather than encapsulating
different functions in ‘sub-assemblies’, such functions are embedded by
directly integrating active materials and structures into locations where they
are needed in ever shrinking volumes. This shift is very apparent when one
contrasts a CRT display from a few years ago with flat panel displays and
emerging products like e-paper that integrate mechanical, optical and
electronic function into every volume element of the product. Thus, we see a
large opportunity for such processes that enable such heterogeneous integration
of electronic, photonic, electro-mechanical and chemical function into products
of unusual physical form factors; flexible, stretchable, large-area, etc. One might envision flexible displays,
conformal, high-efficiency solar collectors, roll-up computers, sensorially
active clothing and so on. Such product ideas are aplenty; a means for
realizing them by conventional fabrication techniques has proven more
difficult. Research in our Center hopes to enable the economically feasible
production of such products.
What are the advantages
of using fluidics as the basis of nanomanufacturing processes?
Fluidic transport is very
efficient and, to a large extent, easy to manage and confine. Further, as one
scales down, the increasing surface-to-volume gives us greater access to the
‘inside’ (if one might call it that) of a flow stream. Thus by functionalizing
the wall of the confinement, one can be very selective about what passes
through; one can catalyze chemical reactions with greater efficiency. So
exploiting all these characteristics allows us to measure, mix and react,
separate and deliver or remove materials with high spatial precision and in
precise quantities – the basis of a manufacturing process.
What is superionic stamping, and why is it important?
Superionic stamping is an
electrochemical process for making metallic interconnects. It is essentially a nanofabrication
technique, and it can potentially be used to create all manner of chemical
sensors, photonic structures, and electrical interconnects. Unlike other
approaches it creates the nanopatterns in a single step, so this technology
could be both low-cost and high-yield.
What is a toolbit and how
does it figure in the research of the Center?
A toolbit in manufacturing
terminology is essentially the business end of the machine tool – the part that
interacts with the workpiece being shaped or built by the machine. To increase
the versatility of the machine this piece that does the real work is made
interchangeable – like the cartridge in your printer.
We look at toolbits as
implementing manufacturing processes by exploiting different transport
phenomena and addressing the manufacture of micro and nanostructures of
different materials and with different geometries.
What are the different types of toolbit, and how are
they different?
There are several different
toolbits, each with unique capabilities. These include:
a. The molecular gate
toolbit: This is a toolbit that uses
efficient electrokinetic transport in long (high-aspect ratio) nanopores. These pores can be made with different
diameters and surface properties to ‘select’ molecules from a stream and drive
them to the printing surface for printing on to a substrate. We are working on creating a toolbit that
embodies a large array of such nanopores that are electronically addressable so
that they can be switched on and off to enable high-throughput printing of
various biomaterials.
b. The e-jet writing
toolbit: This uses
electrohydrodynamic transport to draw liquids from a sub-micron orifice on to a
substrate. It is in some respects like an ink-jet printer, and it gives us very
high resolution and good control of trajectory of the droplets drawn from the
orifice. We recently published a paper in Nature Materials in which we describe this process - we have created
functional submicron electronics using this process. This work is very exciting
- we can now print a wide variety of materials from DNA and protein
suspensions, to conducting and semiconducting polymers, to suspensions of
nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes with sub-micron resolutions using this
technique. This opens up a means of printing functional bio-sensors with
embedded electronics and optics, etc – the heterogeneous integration I was
talking about earlier.
c. The superionic stamping toolbit: Here we create metallic nanostructures. The
approach that the Center has developed allows for nanopatterning of large-area
metallic films with a stamping like process that is very compatible with
imprint lithography equipment.
d. Meniscus-controlled
deposition: Here liquid electrolytes
in sub-micron nozzles are used to build nanowires with metals like copper and
platinum.
e. Direct ink writing
toolbit: This is a pressure driven
direct writing system but the technology is in the formulation of the inks. It
gives us the ability to create 3-D microstructures with sub-micron features in
various materials.
With this coverage, the
Center is helping develop processes that allow us to build nanostructures using
materials ranging from ceramics, metals, semiconductors, polymers and biomaterials.
Work within the Center, under the direction of Professor John Rogers, looks at
how to integrate these structures using an adhesiveless solid transfer printing
process. Together, these processes allow us to address the problem of
heterogeneous integration I spoke about earlier.
Have you or any of your
colleagues formed any startup corporations?
A colleague of mine named
John Rogers is involved in a startup based on our research. This startup is
called Semprius(www.semprius.com), and Semprius has developed a method of
printing semiconductors onto almost any surface. Two students, previously with
the Center have started up a company developing mesoscale machine tools for
micromachining (Microlution, Inc.). The application is not being pursued directly
by the Center, but the development of the positioning technology that goes into
such systems was supported by the Center. There has been a great deal of
interest generated from our research, both from the scientific press and from
potential investors. Some of these concepts will be pursued by startups, but
many will simply be licensed to existing companies.
Could any of these
technologies get commercialized within the next five years?
I think so. It is clear at
this point that the technologies work, and it is primarily a matter of getting
them into production. Nano-CEMMS is not
alone in working on this, the field is highly competitive. But many of the
technologies being developed will never be directly seen by the consumer - they
will serve to improve manufacturing processes.
What are the chief
technical problems to scaling up this technology?
There are three main issues
to scale up - process technology, tools, and recipes. All three of these issues
need more work, but there are no “show stoppers” to commercializing this
technology. Since it is clear that the technology is viable there are already
considerable engineering resources being devoted to its development. So the pace of technological development
should actually accelerate.
If you had $1 million to
invest in nanotech, what investments would you make?
I believe that the area of
tools for nanotechnology (fabrication and imaging) could be particularly
lucrative. Virtually all nanotechnology research involves sophisticated, expensive
tools, and these instruments will be needed regardless of which particular
technologies are successfully developed. So a corporation that develops
superior machines to view and manipulate nanoparticles and nanostructures could
become highly profitable.
Outside of your own work,
what aspect of small and advanced technologies excites you the most?
The concept of biomimicry is
particularly fascinating. Nanotechnology should allow us the opportunity to mimic
many of the processes that nature uses. Natural processes are generally
low-temperature, environmentally benign, efficient, and often quite clever. So
biomimicry could allow us to continue developing in an environmentally
sustainable manner and reducing our environmental footprint.
How do you see your
research evolving over the next decade?
I would naturally like to
see this technology expand. I am confident that some of the technologies that
we are developing will be in widespread use within a decade. Our research could
be applied to enable so many things, such as smaller and cheaper transistors
and microchips, more flexible lighting, superior displays, better diagnostic
tools, cheaper sensors, and more efficient energy collection. If our research is developed as I hope, then
we could see not only improvements in existing industries but also the creation
of entirely new ones.
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