Ryan Randazzo

RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

6/15/2002 03:43 pm

Imagine thousands of tiny submarines coursing through your bloodstream — torpedoing viruses, cancer cells and any other undesirables.

That is what some scientists see for the future of nanotechnology.

Imagine northern Nevada as a development center for such technology. That is what some businesspeople see for the region’s future.

Both might appear like outlandish prospects to some, but just as scientists seek to understand the complexities of nanoscience, so do investors and business leaders seek to nurture such developments in northern Nevada.

Nanotechnology gives scientists the ability to create new materials, atom by atom. With increasingly more powerful microscopes, scientists can see molecules mere nanometers — or billionths of a meter — in size (a pinhead is one million nanometers across). The field intertwines nearly all fields of science.

With the ability to see such particles, scientists — including staff at the University of Nevada, Reno — are building new materials with specific properties designed on the nanometer level.

“It is going to be huge — it is going to be immense,” said Christine Peterson, president of Foresight Institute, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based non-profit, education organization.

Peterson and other nanotechnology specialists stress that while advanced projects such as nanomachines that build themselves are possible, such ambitious projects are a long way off.

In the meantime, stronger industrial materials and drug delivery systems built molecule by molecule are likely soon to hit the market.

Current nanotechnology often is compared with transistor technology of the late 1940s, as are the rewards for becoming a hotbed of development.

“San Jose and Santa Clara became some of the most wealth-creating geopolitical domains in the earth’s history,” said Robb Smith, a partner in Nevada Ventures LP, which donated $300,000 to UNR to study nanoscience. “If UNR had the opportunity to become a research institution in 1947, Reno would be a much different place today.

“The question is, ‘Do we want to let that pass us by again?’ ”

Making the university competitive in nanotechnology research is the first step in defining the region as nano-friendly, Smith said.

“Paradigm shifts, in the true sense of the word, don’t come along often,” he said. “If you own a single niche in one of these areas in nanoscience, it can revolutionize the quality of life for the people in that geographical area.”

Some prospects for nanotechnology nearly go beyond paradigm shifts, namely those put forth by author K. Eric Drexler, founder of Foresight Institute.

The most optimistic scenarios include: postponed aging by repairing human cells one by one; unbound computer power from improved microchip performance; reduced global warming by cleaning greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere with nanoparticles; and pesticides that kill insects without harmful byproducts.

Smith said he hopes someday to have the opportunity to provide venture capital to nanotechnology start-ups in northern Nevada that spin off of research at the university. But he acknowledges that day is a long way off.

Investors ready

Smith said three years were spent looking for an appropriate research field at the university to donate money to before settling on nanotechnology.

“It is futile for Nevada’s institutions to try to compete with an established information technology,” Smith said. “That game has come, gone and been won. We looked for a field where nobody has a lead yet.”

Nevada Ventures, Smith’s firm, does not have investments in any nanotechnology companies.

“We are investing in Nevada’s ability to be a player in nanoscience over the long run,” Smith said. “It is philanthropic.”

The White House, too, is investing in nanoscience, appropriating more than $600 million last year to the National Nanoscience Initiative started by former President Bill Clinton. The fiscal 2003 president’s budget requested a 17 percent increase this year, with roughly one-third of the research money directed to the military.

Investment opportunities in nanoscience are rare, but when they arise, venture capitalists “have their checkbooks out,” Peterson said. “They are ready to invest. I am not sure they are seeing enough interesting proposals, but if you have an interesting proposal you can get funding.”

One reason venture capitalists might avoid nanotechnology is the time required before many innovations are expected to go to market.

“(To get venture capital funding) You have to have a product proposal that is very close to being made and marketed,” Peterson said. “With nanotechnology, most of the potential products are not that close to market.”

Scandal has not eluded nanotechnology, either. In March, a class action suit was filed against Romeoville, Ill.-based Nanophase Technologies Corp., alleging the company presented false and misleading information about its finances to investors.

Outlandish claims of revolutionary technology could be another problem, with many investors still stinging from burns suffered in the recent dot-com collapse.

“A lot of people are wondering the question: ‘Is this science fiction or is this really going to happen?’ ” Peterson said, answering the question herself. “It is not going to happen soon.”

Smith agrees investors need to think long-term about rewards from nanotechnology.

“It is not like we will wake up one day and it will be ‘The Jetsons,’ ” he said.

Tiny research

Plopping a small, black, squid-shaped bundle of fibers into a clear solution, researcher Kwang Kim points out how fast the fibers expand.

Kim, a UNR mechanical engineering professor and interim director of the nanoscience program, is working to create nanofibers that can be controlled to expand and contract like muscles, among other projects.

Such fibers could be used in astronauts’ suits, moving with them as they work to give them greater flexibility in space, or to allow the disabled greater mobility by acting as extra muscles, Kim speculates.

Researchers are working with nanotechnology all over the UNR campus.

“Everybody is coming into this — chemistry, engineering, the school of mines, arts and sciences,” Kim said.

With the help of student researchers, Kim is also investigating artificial muscles and sensors, as well as a nanocoating for metal that could increase the efficiency of power plants and potentially save millions of dollars a year for electricity generators.

Working on a scale smaller than what easily can be seen with powerful microscopes, UNR’s Chemical Physics Program Director Joe Cline is working on building light-controlled molecules that spin in a particular direction.

A molecule that acts like a ratchet by easily spinning in one direction but not another could be used in nanomachines. Research is as far along as being able to measure what direction a molecule is spinning.

“One question I often am asked is, ‘What are you going to do with it when you have it?’ ” Cline said. “These are tough questions to ask.”

Such molecules could be used in computers thousands of times smaller than current semiconductors with immense memory capability or light-activated medicines, Cline speculates.

One of the research projects at UNR, headed by assistant professor Jesse Adams, is trying to improve upon imaging with the atomic force microscope, one of the tools used to observe life at the nanoscale.

Outside of UNR, research is bringing nanoproducts closer to consumers. Clay nanoparticles added to windshields have made them tougher to scuff without affecting clarity, according to a patent assigned to Magna International in April.

On the medical front, researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute are developing magnetic nanofluids. Magnetic particles attached to medicines, like those used in chemotherapy, can be concentrated to one part of the body by using external magnets on patients, they speculate.

Because of the complexities of such research, nanotechnology ending up in consumer products will likely do so without the public ever recognizing the field.

“I am not sure consumers will ever really think of nanotechnology as a household name,” Peterson said. “It is just like with a car. They don’t care about the details, the specific material. They just care about gas mileage, if looks pretty and if it will last.

“Nanotechnology is mostly just chemistry, and most people are extremely bored with chemistry.”