Nanotechnology Research and Funding: Two Different Approaches

There are two fundamentally different approaches to research in nanotechnology. One is the 'top-down' approach. Here scientists use existing materials to create smaller and smaller devices at the nano scale. These devices become extremely tiny but they retain their original properties - they do not morph into something new.

The second approach is the 'bottom-up' approach where the scientific work actually begins at the molecular level, atom by atom, and from this base (involving chemical or biological assembly) the structures and devices thus assembled have fundamentally new properties.

This distinction is important because it seems the majority of nanotechnology applied research worldwide and especially in the United States is currently utilizing the top-down miniaturization approach. Most of the worldwide private funding in this area has until recently come from companies with interests in and around the electronics/computer and semiconductor industries. The top-down approach is what the semiconductor industry has been using to pack more and more computing power onto smaller computer chips for the past three decades. However the international group representing the world's semiconductor industry has said they are reaching a 'brick-wall' in terms of improving on chip capabilities. Many think this 'top-down' approach will completely stall by 2015 as the practical limits of chip miniaturization are reached and quantum effects become paramount.

If in the meantime the 'bottom-up' approach makes significant breakthroughs in the next few years than the world's many multi-billion dollar silicon fabrication facilities may become completely redundant. And yet this would likely only be a small shock in terms of the larger picture and profound impacts on the rest of our economy and society.

The US has been very successful in semiconductor technology based on silicon and germanium and have to a large extent continued in this vein until very recently, focusing on the top-down approach (conventional silicon processing) in much of their R&D efforts.

Europe however, having missed out on much of the semiconductor growth bonanza of the late 20th century, have had no alternative but to take a path initially which focused on investigating alternative new methods and non-standard (and non-silicon) materials and in the research of 'bottom-up' (chemical or biological assembly) fabrication techniques.

In Japan, the focus also seems to be on a molecular bottom-up approach and in the search to explore nanostructures for their potential to replace today's computer chips and build novel nano devices. Most of this public funding is being provided by MITI but some of Japan's largest companies are investing very heavily in what would have earlier been regarded as basic science suited only for government labs. It was probably true just a few years ago that three of Japan's leading companies (NTT. NEC and Fujitu) had more advanced materials fabrication systems in their laboratories than existed in the whole of Europe. Aside from the early corporate involvement, the Japanese government has also been very generous in their spending on capital infrastructure, both at the national labs and at the universities.

The final outcome of the 'bottom-up' versus 'top down' competition may well be a hybrid solution combining both approaches to fabrication techniques. But it seems very likely at this point that the atom-by-atom building approach will be the greater leapfrog technology and quantum technologies research and development will be the underlying building block for many of the key developments in nano technologies.

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The above image is "Quantum Solar System Model' by Mark Sellers.