Exciting Possibilities with Nanotechnology
Exciting Possibilities with Nanotechnology
Just when you thought we have reached the summit of man’s engineering wisdom, we realize that we are just scratching the surface. There’s so much more promise lurking in technologies that harness the power of the atom. No, we’re not talking about nuclear fusion, though that’s another leap alright from the current fission technologies that have given rise to the atom bomb and nuclear power plants lighting our homes. This time, it’s about the technologies that allow manufacturers to handle parts at the molecular level. It’s called nanotechnology, or nanotech for short.
Savoring the possibilities…
For sure the technology is here and it’s beyond just science fiction. There have been research funding from large companies like IBM who have a great stake on nanotechnology as their future businesses. And it is just a matter of time before the first commercial nano products becomes available. We’re looking around the end of the next decade.
• Revolutionary nano materials. Nanotechnology is basically about rearranging molecular structures to assume new materials with the quality we need. You can expect significantly lighter and sturdier materials that can benefit air and space travel, not to mention road travel. Materials lighter than Kevlar and carbon fibers we now use but at remarkably lower cost when used in commercial aviation and other modes of transport will usher cheaper travel fares as it will take lesser amount of fuel to propel them. In addition, fuel sources can be developed using the same nanotechnology that can provide longer battery lives and cheaper fuel alternates.
• Nanocomputers will have microprocessor chips more powerful but are 3-4 times smaller than the most powerful chips we have today. Lithography that has made possible the miniaturization of computers we now enjoy in our mobile phones and netbooks has reached its peak and can no longer yield smaller computing footprints. If computer chip makers are to continue with the trend of increased computing power every year and smaller footprints every 8-12 months, a new manufacturing technology that goes smaller than what Lithography can deliver is needed.
• Nanotechnology opens a new vista for computing and memory storage technologies under radical production techniques that are currently underway. Rather than manipulating silicon with hair-thin circuits on wafer thin boards stacked inside your microprocessor chips, the microprocessor will start to operate on a molecular level to process even greater computer instructions.
• Medication heals at the cellular or molecular level. Medicines don’t heal; it’s the cells that have regained health that heal to bring you back to your healthy self. Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize the way surgery is done by going deeper into the cellular level to correct the root causes of ailments. You won’t necessarily reduce the size of a ship with doctors in it to travel through the bloodstream as in the movies. But both medication and surgery at the cellular level are expected to yield quantum leaps in medical science.
• The military application of nanotech is not about to be overlooked both by governments and weapons manufacturers. We now have smart bombs and other smart weaponry, but in the near future, expect truly smart weapons right in your hands that can evade surveillance or be tracked to their intended targets. Chemical weapons that can think to reach targets with better containment won’t be far once the technology is there to manipulate at the molecular level. GP
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Atom Computers ? Benefiting from Nanotechnology
Atom Computers ? Benefiting from Nanotechnology
Computers of the future will use atoms instead of chips for memory. That’s a simplified way of saying that within the next few years, we can expect miniaturization to go into the atomic level to bring to the consumer and the office more power computers that require significantly less power and possess lesser footprints. Using nanotechnology advances, the computers that we know today will become more powerful and more energy efficient and can fit more snugly inside a handbag.
What we have today
Computers have evolved from using vacuum tubes in their earliest incarnation to transistors in the 60s to integrated circuits of the 70s and to Very Large Scale Integrated circuits (VLSI) of the 80s. The latest VLSI has reached its maximum miniaturization potentials using Lithography to engineer the laptops, netbooks and mobile hand-held phones and gadgets we use today. It’s a landmark technology of the 20th century. But Lithography can only go so far. The microprocessor chips that power the computing gadgets in our hands house millions of transistors in lithographed wafer thin circuit in multiple layers inside those chips. To get them more powerful with ever decreasing sizes and lower power requirements, we need a new technology. We’re headed for something far tinier.
The New Technology for the 21st Century
Tiny means in the vicinity of a billionth of a meter or around 1/500th the width of a hair strand. That’s mathematically called nano. And the engineering technologies behind working at such a microscopic atomic-sized level of parts fall within the ambit of nanotechnology. The benefits behind nanotechnology are so immensely far-reaching; they redefine the technology landscape to open new possibilities that are mostly considered impossible or at least expensive in today’s world.
Computers are among the first to get there. A nanocomputer chip designed at the molecular level is expected to be 3-4 magnitude orders smaller than the smallest chip in the market today and their computing power doubled or tripled. It offers the next generation of computer chip design and manufacture with greater possibilities after exhausting the most that current Lithography VLSI can offer.
Nanomemories
In the near future, expect to boot up a PC in no time. If you’ve ever started a PC or laptop, you know it can be excruciatingly slow. With a new nanotechnology derivative called nanomagnetics that can provide faster memory chips called MRAMs, waiting for the PC to boot up can be banished forever. The new MRAMs are non-volatile memory storage chips that remember virtually all that it captured before power is lost. That makes it useful as a computer DRAM. It is also expected to be employed in other mission critical areas like databases and sensors that require instance access to large quantities of data with minute powering requirements. Smart cards that have embedded chips will get a boost with larger data storage capacities that can contain a person’s entire life history.
When to Expect It
Nanotechnology is real. Realizing this promise is only a matter of time as engineers are perfecting the manufacturing processes for commercial-grade nanotech products to reach the market at the end of the next decade. Grade schoolers of today just might get their mobile phones on a ring by then. In the meantime, expect mobile phones and netbooks to get just incremental improvements in features, nothing radical until the first nanotech atom computers become available. GP
Nanotechnology promises to make our lives better. Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, talks to Jorge Ribas about three ways it could.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
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Nanotechnology Will Improve Computer Efficiency and Power
Nanotechnology Will Improve Computer Efficiency and Power
The next 10 years promises to be an exciting period in the history of computers and networks as nanotechnology takes off to redefine a new level in the way computers are manufactured. It’s not entirely radical as the Lithographic principles behind the manufacturing process can be adopted for nanotech processes. What is revolutionary are the minute molecular-level sizes at which those circuit boards can now be made. This is the core of nanotech – derived from the Greek nano which means tiny. And in this case, we’re talking molecular tiny. In quantitative scientific terms, “tiny” is in the area of a billionth of a meter or around 1/500th the width of a hair strand. That’s “nano” mathematically.
Nanotechnology in Computers
Nanotechnology ushers in a more meaningful and useful age of miniaturization. The Integrated Chip of the 70s did the same thing that was seminal in manufacturing increasingly smaller chips that now power our cellphones and computers. But they have their limits and we have reached that.
With molecule-sized nanotech based manufacturing of processor chips, memory modules and storage devices, these limits can be breached that will eventually bring two things: (1) more powerful, more cost-effective and more power-efficient computers across all platforms, from mainframes down to laptops; and (2) smaller computer footprints for the same power and efficiencies we currently have.
- Nanotech Microprocessors
With greater transistor densities, processor chips these days have grown so powerful that they require more effective cooling systems employing fans and even water-based coolants usually reserved in mainframes. Lithographic technologies that create those wafer thin circuits containing millions of etched transistors have reached practical limits. Nanotechnology’s molecular-level lithography is the next step. Not only will it produce more powerful computer engines, it can make them operate cooler and with less bulk. Associated circuits in the motherboards and even add-on daughterboards like video graphics and sound processors can be integrated into smaller boards so that computers over the next decade can be no larger than the largest cell phones of today.
- Nanomemories
Memory modules in the 1GB to 2GB range are becoming common these days. Even cellphones have memories in that magnitude. But just like processor chips, you have a manufacturing limit to contend with which bears down on the maximum speed, size and powering efficiency of memory chips. Over the next few years, more powerful RAM with higher capacities and speeds but lower costs can be made from nonmagnetic technology.
- Solid State ”hard drives”
Disk drives have likewise reach the size and capacity limits. If you look at your flash drives now commonly sporting 4, 8 and 16 GB capacities, they are all solid state storage devices that hold the promise of greater storage capacities and efficiencies in computers.
They are also immune to physical shocks or mechanical crashes that hard disks are prone to suffer. But they are expensive to produce and have the highest costs per megabyte of memory compared with a 1Terrabyte hard disk we have at this time. Nanotechnology should take care of that. Expect nanotech-based flash drive technology to evolve with higher memory capacity that will eventually make it more cost effective to replace current electro-mechanical hard drives. GP
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