Philosophy and Themes in Nanotechnology Eugene H. Kim Department of Physics University of Windsor collaborators: S. H. Eichhorn (Chemistry, U. Windsor) J. Gauld (Chemistry, U. Windsor) X. Nie (Materials Engineering, U. Windsor) Good afternoon. I'd like to thank you all for attending and making this such an exciting event.
Medicine CAT scan
Detect minute amounts of Medicine current state of the art: Detect 109 cancer cells. What if… Detect minute amounts of cancer cells.
Detect minute amounts of Medicine What if… Detect minute amounts of foreign material.
Medicine Radiation therapy
Medicine What if… Target only the disease. Administer a small dosage directly to the disease.
Electronics
Electronics What if… Circuits which can build themselves. Transistors which are ~100 to 1000 times smaller than current transistors. source VG drain island Circuits which can build themselves.
Build from the “bottom up”. Nanotechnology Philosophy Build from the “bottom up”. Fabricate structures atom by atom (or molecule by molecule) with fundamentally new properties and/or functions.
Length Scales 1 nanometer = one billionth of a meter (10-9 meters) Gate length of a transistor ~ 130nm Diameter of a human hair ~ 100,000nm Protein ~ 50nm
Over $5 billion worldwide in government funding. Canada Laboratories of the NRC Universities National Institute for Nanotechnology (Alberta) $120million for 5 years
Multidisciplinary NANOTECHNOLOGY Physics Chemistry Biology Mathematics Engineering
Biological Systems
Molecular Electronics Circuits utilizing molecules. molecule: tiny resistor and capacitor molecular transistor source drain molecule
Molecular Electronics sensors Presence of foreign materials affects transport through the device. source drain molecule
Molecular Electronics Molecular Electronics Devices Biological Systems Use molecular electronics to study biological systems.
Study Biological Systems Can we monitor DNA transcription? source drain
Summary Nanotechnology Philosophy Multidisciplinary Build from the “bottom up”. Multidisciplinary Physics Biology Chemistry Mathematics Engineering