NANOTECHNOLOGY AS SCIENCE FRICTION

While there is a commonly held belief that nanotechnology is a futuristic science with applications 25 years in the future and beyond, nanotechnology is anything but science fiction. In the last 15 years over a dozen Nobel prizes have been awarded in nanotechnology, from the development of the scanning probe microscope (SPM), to the discovery of fullerenes. According to CMP Científica, over 600 companies are currently active in nanotechnology, from small venture capital backed start-ups to some of the world's largest corporations such as IBM and Samsung. Governments and corporations worldwide have ploughed over $4 billion into nanotechnology in the last year alone. Almost every university in the world has a nanotechnology department, or will have at least applied for the funding for one.

Even more significantly, there are companies applying nanotechnology to a variety of products we can already buy, such as automobile parts, clothing and ski wax. Nanotechnology is already all around us if you know where to look.

The confusion arises in part because many people in the business world do not know where to look. Over the last decade, technology has become synonymous with computers, software and communications, whether the Internet or mobile telephones. Many of the initial applications of nanotechnology are materials related, such as additives for plastics, nanocarbon particles for improved steels, coatings and improved catalysts for the petrochemical industry. All of these are technology-based industries, maybe not new ones, but industries with multi-billion dollar markets.