Nanotechnology comes to Puerto Rico
The periods of history have been characterized by the discovery of new materials that have driven technological progress and provided humans with the ability to control and manipulate the environment and promote progress. For example, the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century was spearheaded by the discovery of a process to mass produce steel, opening the window for the steam engine and modern textile machinery, and, eventually, the automobile. A similar new era was initiated with the harnessing of the semiconducting properties of silicon and the invention of the transistor and the microchip which has permitted the informatics revolution to dominate our culture.
The source of the emerging field of nanotechnology is the nano-particle: a particle made of atoms or molecules so mall that it is about one thousandth of one billionth of the height of a human being. Actually, one nano-particle can fit inside a human cell and is smaller than a virus. Contrary to common belief, nano-particles were not created by humans, they exist in nature. If you take a stroll on one of our beautiful beaches and take a handful of sand, it will contain nano-silica, as our scientists have been able to verify with the assistance of the workhorse of nanotechnologists, the high resolution transmission electron microscope that allows them to see at the scale of atoms.
The birth of nanoscience came about 1985, when two new nano-scale forms of elemental carbon were discovered: the nanotubes that are about one ten thousandth the width of a human hair and resemble, at the atomic scale, chicken wire rolled into a hollow cylinder and the Fullerenes that resemble a hollow soccer ball. Nanotechnology became a reality when scientists and technologists learned how to fabricate new nano-materials and manipulate their properties with unheard of skill to tailor their properties, almost at will, to create novel materials of technological value.
The commercialization of the new nanotechnologies started in earnest in the mid-1990s and, at present, it supports an industrial activity of about $1 trillion anually. Yet the economic growth potential of nanotechnology is still at the incipient stage and is expected to grow at an accelerated rate and achieve a three-fold growth in the next 10 years. In contrast to the biotechnology sector of the economy that is now being progressively dominated by multinationals, nanotechnology is still dominated by start-up firms that are opening new markets with high growth potential.
Cognizant of these facts, the Puerto Rico-based Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) for the past 10 years had been developing the human resources and research infrastucture needed to sustain the competitive R&D in nanotechnology at the University of Puerto Rico.
In late 2005, EPSCoR convened at a retreat of the 28 most productive nanoscientists in Puerto Rico that concluded with the participants agreeing to constitue themselves into an Institute for Functional Nanomaterials (IFN) to advance and create synergy between R&D, Innovation and Economic Development and usher the era of nanotechnology in Puerto Rico. This month the National Science Foundation and UPR provided the IFN with $13 million to support the IFN infrastructure for a three-year period. The Institute will promote the collaboration among the major nano-research projects in Puerto Rico to conduct research in functionalizing nano-materials in three thrusts with the following technological relevance: dispersed nano-particles that will create novel applications for flat screen displays, for cancer treatments, and biosensors for environmental monitoring; nano-catalysts to make low-weight power sources, such as fuel cells, that will lower contamination produced by cars; and multifunctional nano-materials for the next generation of permanent memory devices and superfast computers for the informatics industry. To ensure that nanotechnology will become a major contributor to our economic growth, the IFN has partnered with the NanoBusiness Alliance, the largest association of nano-businesses on the mainland and with Inteco technology corridor of Puerto Rico, to attract and develop start-up nano-businesses in the jurisdiction.
Nano-particles are extremely small, but the technologies that they have engendered are, and can be, extremely powerful. To illustrate the potential of the technologies that can come out of the IFN's R&D and innovation process, we will use the carbon nanotubes, the discovery that started the era of nanotechnology, and one of the research areas of the IFN. Because of the close-knit mesh of carbon atoms, nanotubes are pound per pound 300 times stronger than structural steel. This means that, when nanotechnologists perfect the art of fabricating nanotubes on the order of meters rather than millimeters, a suspension bridge with a span of a 100 miles could be built, dwarfing the 1.2 mile span of The Golden Gate Bridge. But once a technology as powerful as this is developed, the imagination can take flight; Dr. Richard Smalley, one of the founders of nanoscience and 1996 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, proposed during a seminar sponsored by EPSCoR the construction of a super-elevator suspended by nanotubes wires to lift astronauts to stationary orbiting satellite, rather than using extremely expensive rockets. Not even Jules Verne could have dreamt this.
Nanotechnology will impact all aspects of human life, but the biggest potential applications that will come out of the IFN will be based on the smallness of the nano-particles and the microscropic world of the cell. This is where nanotechnology beets biotechnology, the subject of our next article.
