Supersmall
Through electron and atomic force microscopes, physicists and chemists are looking to nature to build materials from the bottom up. The impact of this unprecedented development - nanotechnology - has yet to materialize on the macro scale. Nanoscience is the study of systems with nanometer dimensions and the manifestation of Richard Feynman’s big idea more than 40 years ago. According to George M. Whitesides, Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, it is “a contender with genomics for changing the world.” Ever since IBM famously positioned 35 xenon atoms into the form of its corporate logo, it has been widely accepted that we can manipulate matter at the atomic scale. The big question remains: Now that we can move atoms, what will we do with them? Perhaps mimicking biological, not mechanical, systems will lead us to our answer.
NANOTUBES (left). In 1996, Sir Harold Kroto was jointly awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry with Richard Smalley and Robert Curl of Rice University, Texas, for the discovery of C60, which led to the development of carbon nanotubes. Image Courtesy of Kroto.
ATOMIC LOGO (right). The Scanning Tunneling Microscope made it possible for the IBM logo to be spelled out in atoms.
SYNTHETIC OPALS. As computer chips become smaller, their tiny electrical connections are likewise getting smaller, and limits will inevitably be reached. So the search is underway for an entirely new materials system to replace current technologies.
Synthetic opals are a new kind of material that may one day enable faster chips that work entirely with light instead of electricity. This innovation could hold the key to the next generation of ultra-fast computers, and may find applications no one has yet imagined. The synthetic opals shown here are composed of perfectly spherical, nanometre-sized balls of ordinary glass, precisely organized into a close-packed, 3D array. Into this base, scientists engineer “functional defects” such as waveguides that trap the light, enabling it to bend ninety degrees without loss, and creating circuits of light.
