NANOTECH ORGANISATIONS

Some non-profit nanotech organizations

European NanoBusiness Association

Institute of Nanotechnology (UK)

The NanoBusiness Alliance (US)

Canadian Nanobusiness Alliance

NanoSIG

Beckman Institute (US)

Center for Nanospace Technologies (US)

Foresight Institute (US)

Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (US)

Michigan Molecular Institute (US)

The interest from the investment community has been sparked by some impressive-sounding claims about the potential revenues that nanotechnology will generate, although VCs are showing a healthy level of caution when it comes to actually handing over money. The US's National Science Foundation predicts that the total market for nanotech products and services will reach $1 trillion by 2015 (National Science Foundation, “Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology,” March 2001) and huge variations in existing and predicted market sizes have been seen. These are generally offered unqualified and the size of some figures suggests that they are including revenues for any industry seeing an impact from nanotech. Counting the revenues of these industries as nanotechnology revenues is misleading. The huge semiconductor industry is moving into the nanoscale and companies in the sector are sometimes casting themselves as nanotechnology companies. Considering the revenues of the semiconductor industry, as nanotechnology will produce figures that are of use to no one—a more sophisticated approach is needed, separating out pure nanotechnology revenues, such as those of nanotube manufacturers, from the contribution of nanotechnology to existing industries.

A number of non-profit organizations focused on the development of nanotechnology have been in existence for some time, while still others are just now being created. Europe now has 86 nanotechnology networks, although most of these are purely scientific in nature.

We would categorize most of the activities discussed so far as relating to short- or medium-term technologies. In the long-term category there are ideas that often sound like science fiction and which are often over-hyped and misunderstood by the press or dismissed out of hand as fantasy. With the rider that these ideas are not just long-term, but often speculative, now we'll take a brief look at them.