The Trends editors have been monitoring nanotechnology since the late ‘80s, when it was just a gleam in the eyes of a few visionaries. As of the second quarter 2005, several new developments are occurring that make this technology trend increasingly important. Quietly ? almost too quietly ? nanotechnology products have begun creeping into the marketplace, even as basic research in that burgeoning field spreads worldwide and accelerates its pace.
According to an article in The Economic Times of India, major Indian textile manufacturers that supply The Gap and Banana Republic are already shipping materials made with nanotechnology products woven into them for better stain resistance, crease resistance, and even body-odor-eliminating bacteria resistance.
In the U.S., Glen Raven, a North Carolina company that’s been making textiles for 125 years and, in fact, made the American flag that was planted on the moon, is now using nanotech to make bullet-proof vests. And this is just the tip of a global iceberg in nanotech. This market is heating up fast and moving from basic research to the retail store shelves, while forecasters, including the National Science Foundation, are saying that within a decade, nanotech could be a trillion-dollar business and provide two million new jobs in the U.S. alone.
As reported by the Associated Press, a whole range of nanotech products is now emerging from the pipeline, from self-cleaning windows to fog-resistant eyeglasses to better sports equipment, sunscreens, and computer memory.
Nanotechnology, you’ll recall, is the engineering of materials at an incredibly tiny scale. A nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, is about the width of a dozen hydrogen atoms, which is to say, close to the smallest material measurements in existence, other than subatomic particles.
For comparison, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide. Nanoscale materials are less than 100 ? and often only a few ? nanometers in size. This new field has been touted as the next industrial revolution, set to transform everything from medicine to supercomputers.
Part of the allure comes from the fact that when you reduce the size of a sample of material, you change its fundamental characteristics, whether they’re electrical, magnetic, chemical, physical, or even their color. Gold is normally yellow, for example. But if you reduce it to a small enough sample, it’s red. And if you reduce it further to a few atoms, it’s green.
The theoretical idea of nanotechnology was proposed about 40 years ago. But the birth of nanotechnology is usually pinpointed at November of 1989, when scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in California wrote their corporate logo using 35 xenon atoms, so small that 300 million of these logos would fit into a typical period printed at the end of a sentence.
Now, according the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, scientists at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center envision a time when fleets of medical nanobots smaller than a human cell will roam through a patient’s bloodstream, killing cancer cells, eliminating infection, and opening clogged arteries.
To spur this spectacular explosion of innovation in nanotech, the National Nanotechnology Initiative has committed almost $1 billion a year for the next four years to research, the largest science and engineering initiative since the push to put men on the moon. In addition, more than 30 states have their own spending plans, with Georgia alone pledging $45 million for a new nanotech research center at Georgia Tech, and designs on becoming one of the leading centers for developments in the new industry.
The National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health have earmarked $144 million for a five-year effort by Georgia Tech researchers to apply nanotechnology to cancer treatment, specifically the development of quantum dots. Quantum dots are nano-scale bits of semiconductor materials with a wide variety of applications. One of them is to create sub-microscopic medical devices that will seek out and destroy cancer cells.
Just a few years ago, journalists, scientists, and industry watchers were approaching all this very cautiously because it sounds like science fiction. But with these vast sums of money being poured into it, we at Trends believe it represents a very solid development that bears close watching.
For one thing, the scientific journals are inundated with nanotech research papers. Some 7,000 were published in the last year alone. The industry now has its own newspaper, Small Times, which engages in discussions of policy debates over the future of self-replicating machines and litigation involving patent protection and intellectual property.
Over the years, we’ve brought you a variety of nano-news. At Washington University in St. Louis, researchers created nanowhiskers, for example, that will be used to create molecule-sized wires. MIT developed a so-called “smart surface” that repels water at the flick of a switch. These, and dozens of other, little developments are pieces of the puzzle that will ultimately serve to propel nanotechnology into the enormous global business that is just now beginning to surface in new products.
Already, chips for computers and cell phones contain nano-scale circuits. A new Mercedes now comes with a nano-paint that never needs waxing. More powerful golf clubs are being made out of nano-fibers. Nano-tennis balls have more bounce. Even nano-bowling balls and golf balls are being sold because they find a truer path than the conventional ones.
But these are only the first tentative steps in what promises to be a true paradigm shift in nearly every industry we now know. Some observers have compared it to the shift in technology from stone to metal in ancient times.
And this is where some of the interesting business opportunities come in. Because there has been so much hype about nanotechnology, and because the possibilities are so remarkable in themselves ? such as using carbon nanotubes to build an elevator to outerspace ? a lot of people aren’t paying attention to this important development. For example, unless you’ve seen a guitar with strings too thin to be visible to the human eye, it’s difficult to believe that it exists ? but it does.
But try to remember what it would have been like 20 years ago ? or even 15 years ago ? if someone told you that you’d have a machine on your desk that would allow you to communicate instantly with anyone in the world, or look up any document ever printed, or buy almost any product with the push of a few buttons. Most people, if they’d heard of it at all, couldn’t quite believe in the possibility of today’s Internet back then.
In light of nanotech’s enormous potential and growing momentum, we offer the following six forecasts for your consideration.
First, in the near term of the next two to three years, the market valuation of nanotech start-ups will remain soft due to the popular misunderstanding ? or even ignorance of ? nanotechnology and its future. A recent survey showed that some 80 percent of people knew virtually nothing about nanotechnology. Within the next few years, however, nano-based products will proliferate in the marketplace, mostly improvements on products we already have, such as better packaging or longer-lasting auto parts. During this time, those companies that provide the basic tools of nanotech, such as nano-microscopes and devices with which to manipulate individual atoms, will be the big winners. For example, MTS Systems, which makes tools used in nanotech labs, saw its stock rise 80 percent in 2004, according to a recent Business Week cover story.
Second, within the next two years, diagnostic instruments with nano-scale components will become pocket laboratories in the medical community, providing instant testing for HIV and white-blood-cell counts. Nano-sensors of all sorts will proliferate in places like airports and post offices, where they will be used to detect anthrax or other dangerous agents. This will begin to focus public attention on the trend.
Third, with 1,200 new nanotech start-ups already in business, and half of them in the U.S., the already furious patent activity will increase, as companies try to stake out their turf. Already there are indexes of nanotech stocks, but they are as yet unfocused, with 19 of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial index having already launched nano-initiatives. As the public becomes more and more aware of the nanotech revolution, an array of powerful IPOs will hit the street, and the battle will be on to become the Microsoft or Intel of nanotechnology.
Fourth, largely because of advances in nanotech, the basic sciences ? such as biology, chemistry, physics, and electronics ? will begin to merge at the research level over the next 10 years, as the old boundaries lose their meaning. Companies that launch multi-disciplinary R&D programs that reach across boundaries to create novel hybrid solutions will be the biggest winners. For example, Israeli biologists and electrical engineers teamed up to attach DNA to carbon nano-tubes, which then self-assembled to create nano-transistors. Demonstrating such developments will increase the flow of cash for research from both government and private sources and accelerate the breakthroughs. There will be intense global competition, with nations, not just companies, vying for dominance. In the process we expect a new “Silicon Valley of Nanotech” to emerge.
Fifth, within 20 years, nanotech will completely transform nearly every aspect of health care, from testing to diagnosis to treatment. Initially, companies that produce testing equipment will do best, because there is less regulation there, while therapies must be approved by the FDA. LabNow Inc. in Austin, Texas already has a “blood laboratory” on a chip the size of a business card. With a single drop of blood, it can detect the HIV virus in minutes, instead of the weeks or months it usually takes. We expect point-of-care testing, now a $5 billion market, to explode in the next few years. For example, LabNow will introduce its system in South Africa at the end of this year.
Sixth, all of these developments will trigger a debate over the safety considerations of nanotech, ranging from its effects on the global environment to the dangers those nanomaterials may pose directly to humans and animals. As envisioned in a recent novel by Michael Crichton, people may become frightened about the possibility of self-replicating nano-bots taking over the world. Expect to see more heated controversy as the industry matures.
References List : 1. The Economic Times, January 22, 2005, “Premium Wear: Fabrics to Come with Nanotech,” by Rajeev Jayaswal. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The Times of India Group. All rights reserved.2. Associated Press, November 8, 2004, “Nanotechnology-based Products Starting to Have Big Consumer Impact,” by Linda A. Johnson. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.3. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 5, 2004, “Atomic-Scale Engineering May Be Out of Sight, but Advances Assure That It Wont Be Out of Mind,” by Mike Toner. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. All rights reserved.4. BusinessWeek, February 14, 2005, “The Business of Nanotech,” by Stephen Baker and Adam Aston. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
