THE NANO INDUSTRY

It is increasingly common to hear people referring to `the nanotechnology industry', just like the software or mobile phone industries, but will such a thing ever exist? Many of the companies working with nanotechnology are simply applying our knowledge of the nanoscale to existing industries, whether it is improved drug delivery mechanisms for the pharmaceutical industry, or producing nanoclay particles for the plastics industry. In fact nanotechnology is an enabling technology rather than an industry in its own right. No one would ever describe Microsoft or Oracle as being part of the electricity industry, even though without electricity the software industry could not exist. Rather, nanotechnology is a fundamental understanding of how nature works at the atomic scale. New industries will be generated as a result of this understanding, just as the understanding of how electrons can be moved in a conductor by applying a potential difference led to electric lighting, the telephone, computing, the internet and many other industries, all of which would not have been possible without it.

While it is possible to buy a packet of nanotechnology, a gram of nanotubes for example, it would have zero intrinsic value. The real value of the nanotubes would be in their application, whether within existing industry, or to enable the creation of a whole new one.