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SCMP Reporter

IMAGINE a technology that allows you to manipulate a single atom and place it precisely in a specific position - a technology that promises to affect virtually every aspect of our world.

  Scientists exploring nanotechnology are working on a scale 500 times smaller than today's advanced computer chips.

   The ability to manipulate individual atoms would mean that a computer with more power and more memory than the combined capacity of all the computers ever produced could be made no bigger than a lump of sugar.

  But how can scientists pick up a single atom and place it in a precise location?    Researchers believe the answer could lie in adapting the relatively new and extremely powerful atomic force microscope.

   This device uses a diamond with a single atom at its tip to take pictures of atoms based on the electronic forces between them.

  Researchers have found that when using the microscope they can also move individual atoms. IBM's Almaden Research Laboratories in California used an atomic force microscope to place individual xenon atoms on a nickel surface to spell IBM.

  Eric Drexler, who coined the term nanotechnology in the mid-1980s and is the author of the book Nanto Systems, believes that atomic force microscopes can be adapted to be efficient manipulators of individual atoms.

  'It will be an enabling technology if we can develop atomic force microscopes that 'grip' an atom and not only position it but also rotate it,' Mr Drexler says. Current research is focused on adapting the microscope.

  However, building a product atom by atom using an atomic force microscope would be an incredibly slow process. Researchers have proposed building molecular machines invisible to the naked eye to do the manipulating.

  Ralph Merkle, a researcher in nanotechnology at the California-based Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, believes the potential applications are great.

   'If we can create a manufacturing technology that can precisely manipulate individual atoms, we can improve virtually every product made,' he says.

  Scientists believe that the first applications for such technology are likely to be in medicine and surgery. Molecular machines could be injected into the body to seek out and kill diseased cells and repair delicate organs.

  Researchers also believe there will be defence applications, such as the development of new weapons systems and lightweight hardware.

  Mr Merkle believes that nanotechnology will usher in the Diamond Age, an age as important as Stone, Bronze, Iron and Silicon.

   'Diamond is 50 times stronger than steel, it is light, it makes an excellent semiconductor, its heat conduction is excellent. It is the all-round ideal material,' he says.

  How far away are the promises of nanotechnology? Mr Drexler believes 'it may be 15 to 20 years away'.

   He adds: 'We are talking about a technology that is inevitable, a technology that will have a greater impact than the industrial revolution on a much shorter time-scale, yet we are doing nothing to prepare for it.'   Mr Merkle is optimistic about development prospects: 'I don't know when we will have these capabilities, but look at how quickly chip manufacturers are shrinking their chip designs, and look at the rate that manufacturing technologies are improving their resolution, and consider the rate at which power consumption of individual transistors is declining.

  'If you chart these rates as straight lines, they all converge in the 2010 to 2020 time-frame.'   In the meantime, nanotechnology researchers are busy designing the computers and molecular machines that they believe will be built one day.

  Nanotechnology research is being carried out by small groups of scientists around the world.

   Japan recently began a 10-year, US$200m research programme, but so far there has been no large-scale organised effort, despite what some researchers see as great promise.

  Commercial interest is growing in the subject, and the northern California area is emerging as a focal point for commercial and academic work. Nanothinc, a San Francisco-based company, was recently formed to disseminate information on nanotechnology and to help identify investment opportunities.

  Paul Green, Nanothinc chairman, describes nanotechnology as 'the mother of all technologies'. But right now it is a technology that is attempting the difficult transition from the theoretical to the practical.

      Mr Drexler, while optimistic about the wider impact on trade, jobs and economies of a technology that could make virtually any product 100 times cheaper and with a quality at least 10 times and with a quality at least 10 times better.

   'Nanotechnology is inevitable. There is no one arguing that it won't happen. Therefore, we must begin to plan on its use and how it will change our societies.' 



Microscope that can harness atom for super computer