Research Stories

by Joe Kullman

The nanotechnology revolution is not on the horizon—it's already here. Much of human life in the future now appears likely to depend a lot on where the engineers and scientists and gurus of nanotechnology take us.

A nanometer is one billionth the size of a meter. That's about one-hundred-thousandth the width of a single human hair. Small? Yeah - really, really, really small. At this nanoscale the seemingly freaky principles of quantum physics can rule. The ways that materials behave can change substantially compared to their characteristics at larger scales.

Carbon becomes many times stronger than steel at the nanoscale. Gold melts at room temperatures. Normally stable materials such as aluminum become volatile—even explosive.

Scientists and engineers have learned how to manipulate matter at these atomic and molecular levels. They are creating new materials and building nanodevices. These tiny devices will operate at the edge of infinity. Nanomaterials and devices hold vast potential for applications in health and medicine, energy generation, and environmental management. They will play a role in future national security. They also will become part of consumer products from electronics to clothing, cosmetics, paints, and sunscreen lotions.

Right now, researchers are experimenting with medicinal drugs transported in tiny nanodevices. The devices are designed to travel inside the human body to find and destroy cancer cells. Other possibilities are equally mind boggling. Not too far in the future engineers may use nanotechnology to encode all the information held by the Library of Congress into a device the size of a sugar cube.

Arizona State University is considered among the nation's leading institutions in nanotechnology research. Small Times is one of the world's most prominent publications on micro and nanotechnology. In 2008, the publication ranked ASU sixth nationally among universities for its work in those areas.

At ASU, engineers and scientists of every flavor—physicists, chemists, biologists, computer scientists, and other specialists—are busy with projects of many kinds. They delve into nearly every aspect of the nanotechnology realm.

These ASU researchers work at centers and laboratories under the direction of the Biodesign Institute, the School of Materials, the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Global Institute of Sustainability. They work to explore and expand the landscapes of nanoelectronics, nanobioscience, nanoionics, nanophotonics, nanofabrication, and more.

"The scientific and economic impact of this technology is enormous," says Stephen Goodnick, director of the Arizona Institute for Nanoelectronics at ASU. "It is going to change our lives and environment in profound and lasting ways. It's a very big transformative tide that is happening on a scale so small you can't see it."

In the palm of your hand
Nanotechnology offers the promise of putting the world in the palm of your hand—technologically speaking.

To see how, look at work being done at ASU's Center for Applied Nanoionics. Michael Kozicki is the center's director. The electrical engineering professor and his colleagues work with ions at the nanoscale. Their results will likely someday enable a voluminous collection of high-definition movies, music, TV shows, home video and photographs to be stored simultaneously on a device that can fit into the typical shirt pocket.

The technology may provide that device with an information storage capacity greater than that of hard drives on today's standard personal computers. But it will be in a much smaller and more rugged form.

Such a device might allow "instant on" capability. That would avoid lengthy boot-up times for your personal computer. It would also replace today's flash memory. The result would be increased capacity with a simultaneous boost to the lifespan of batteries that power digital cameras, laptop computers, iPods, and other wireless consumer electronics.

The current limitations on portable electronic storage would be obliterated. "Ultimately, there could be enough memory on a thumb drive to store a record of your entire life," Kozicki says.

Best of all, the devices would cost less to manufacture and be more energy efficient. Kozicki says it is also possible to use materials common to semiconductor chip manufacturing, such as silicon dioxide and copper, to create low-cost nanoionic memory.

Ions are electrically charged atoms. Researchers at the center study specific processes that enable rapid movement of ions. The new technology is based on advances in nanoionics within nanoscale systems.

In one such process, the ions are moved quickly between electrodes on semiconductor chips. They form nanostructures that can be used to store information. Using the ions rather than the electrons alone provides technical advantages. They allow for the production of more memory storage capacity, Kozicki says.

Scaled down to nanosize, traditional electronics is transformed. Typically, components are pushed closer together to provide greater functionality. But the downside is that more power is consumed and more heat is generated in a smaller area. That leads to a variety of problems.

"The use of nanotechniques reduces the amount of energy a memory device needs to operate," Kozicki says. "You can put in a lot more memory in a smaller space without overheating the chip. Plus, it won't drain battery power. And you can turn off all the power in the device and it will still retain all the information."

Conventional flash memory uses electronic charges to store information. Kozicki and his ASU colleagues use nanotechnology techniques to manipulate metal ions to create nanowires. These are used to hold vast amounts of data.

It's a neat trick. It also is likely to bring advances that make all the disk drives in today's laptop computers and MP3 players obsolete. They will be replaced by this new technology that makes electronic devices lighter as well as more durable and reliable. The new devices also will work faster, Kozicki says.

"Moving ions around is going to lead to some interesting things, even beyond memory," he continues. "There will be advances in robotics as well as what they call ‘lab on a chip' for medical diagnostics."

Another facet of the magic involves the nanomaterials that researchers can make "spontaneously self-assemble," he says.

Think of ping-pong balls with magnets glued to them, Kozicki explains. "Throw the balls in a bucket and shake them up. You are going to get some kind of structure that self-assembles following certain natural patterns of attraction."

Scientists and engineers are concocting new recipes that mix and match nanomaterials to explore what technological possibilities emerge.
"It's amazing how fast things are moving. Even so, we are barely scratching the surface of nanotechnology" Kozicki says. "But the floodgates are going to be opened soon."

Technology developed at ASU already has been licensed to several companies. At least one of those companies is close to producing the first commercial nanoionic memory product.

Nanotechnology research at ASU takes place in many colleges, centers, departments, and institutes. Funding is provided by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and numerous other federal agencies, private industries, and foundations. For more information, visit the Ira. A. Fulton School of Engineering at www.fulton.asu.edu