Comment Articles

Nanotech's promises and perils

Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com CNET News

Published: 11 Jul 2003 09:53 BST

Nantero is the kind of start-up that demonstrates the potential -- and the lurking pitfalls -- of nanotechnology.

This 10-employee company, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, is aiming to revolutionise the memory business by replacing the traditional silicon and metal circuits inside conventional chips with a lattice of carbon nanotubes.

Ultimately, the use of these thin strands of carbon atoms, which are endowed with extraordinary properties, could lead to memory chips that would be cheap, extremely fast and likely to keep going far longer than anyone who buys them.

Nantero says it has invented a way to implant the nanotubes onto conventional silicon wafers using existing chipmaking equipment -- a breakthrough that ideally could keep manufacturing costs low. In May, the company announced it had created a working 10-gigabit array of carbon nanotubes on the surface of a conventional 4-inch wafer.

"A local (chip fabrication facility) went under, and we got some of their equipment cheap," Nantero chief executive Greg Schmergel said.

On the positive side, Nantero again underscores the notion that, despite ongoing scepticism, nanotechnology is for real.

Briefly put, nanotechnology is the science of making products out of components that measure 100 nanometres or less. (A nanometre is a billionth of a metre). This is more than "small for small's sake." At these dimensions, matter begins to behave differently. Electrical conductors, for example, can become insulators.

In this world, the carbon nanotube is the supreme celebrity. Invented by scientists at Japanese tech giant NEC, nanotubes are 1,000 times better at conducting electricity than is copper, more than 50 times stronger than steel and can insulate better (or dissipate less heat) than can diamonds, the world's best insulators.

To semiconductor companies, new and revolutionary technologies often represent new and revolutionary methods for losing billions of dollars.