Cory Slaughter

Nanotechnology has been the subject of many books, video games,

and television shows in recent years, and anyone familiar with Star Trek,
Doctor Who, or the author Ben Bova can attest to the potential malignant
force of these microscopic machines. But, while any new technology can be
used for pain and destruction, the potential benefits are vast.
Id like to focus this paper on a few basic ideas about nanotechnology,
and their potential influence on the future of electrical engineering and the
technology market.
Lets begin by talking about what nanotechnology is. Etymologically,
the Greek word nanos meant a dwarf, someone or something that was very
small. Which is a great way to describe these devices, theyre very small bits
of technology. How small? For something to be considered nanotechnology,
one of its dimensions must be 1 nanometer, which is 10-9 meters, or one
billionth of a meter. For perspective, a hair from an average persons head is
50,000 nanometers wide. Id say that qualifies as very small. Its the ability
to manipulate something one atom at a time. Take graphene for example. It
has one dimension that is one nanometer, its height. When rolled into a tube,
it creates something called a carbon nanotube, a cylinder that can be highly
conductive to both heat and electricity, is incredibly strong, and can be bent
into many different shapes.
Supposes you want your phone to be even smaller than it is. How could
we make that happen, and could nanotechnology help us achieve that? So
1

Cory Slaughter

far in electronics, weve taken a top down approach, taking something big
and producing something small. But what if we could start at the nanoscale,
and build up a microchip, or in this case, a nanochip, atom by atom? That
would allow us to make a computer chip smaller than the width of a human
hair, with more capabilities than the average desktop. What could that
mean? Well, that cell phone in your pocket would be able to get even
smaller, and with its decreased would come increased speed. The SD card in
your camera could hold more pictures and videos, probably with a better
quality. A tablet computer with the processing power of a supercomputer
could fit in the palm of your hand. The possibilities are endless.
A nurse walks into a patients room to give him his medicine. Hes
been in the hospital for a week, more than enough time for the treatment to
begin working, but it doesnt seem to be doing anything. Unfortunately for
the patient, and unbeknownst to the nurse, the treatment isnt working
because of a genetic component in the patient that causes the medicine to
be ineffective. One day, we will be able to implant sensors, or biochips,
directly into a person to monitor the effectiveness of a medication, be able to
accurately predict what genetic diseases may appear, and even allow the
pharmaceutical industry to make individualized medicine, medicine
guaranteed to work for the patient.
All of this is great, but how does one apply all of this? One potential
use of nanotechnology with computers is the creation and use of nanotubes

Cory Slaughter

as wires. Made today, wires arent the most efficient way of getting energy
from one place to another. The electrons have a tendency to hit the side of
the wire, which transfers energy in the form of heat. So the electrons are
losing energy, and the wires are heating up, which puts you at a risk of a fire.
Carbon nanotubes however (pictured at the right), are so small that the
electrons dont have enough room to move around
and hit the sides. This will prevent that energy loss
and unwanted heating (and thus, the fire hazard). It
has its problems though, as we havent found a way
to make a perfect single nanotube yet, and theyre
having a hard time hooking the ones they have up to
the electrodes (Fangbo Xu, Arta Sadrzadeh, Zhiping
Xu, and Boris I. Yakobson,
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=13&sid=e239d7f56507-463a-a928-a24147c943c8%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4208). But, again,
its a work in progress, and the results will be simply fantastic.
Another area nanotechnology can improve is the transistor. The
transistor is the part of the computer that makes decisions, and it has two
settings: its either on or off. Those two settings determine everything your
computer can do. How a macro sized (or regular sized) transistor works is by
utilizing an electric current to determine if its open or closed, and then pass
to the next, and the next. Moores Law states that we can fit twice as many
transistors into the same space in two years. So in 2000, we could fit about
3

Cory Slaughter

40,000 transistors onto a single chip, while two years later we could fit
80,000 on a chip of the same size. But, theres a limit to how much we can
shrink the transistors, and its predicted that if we havent hit it yet, we will
pretty soon. One possible solution is building a microchip from the bottom
up, or starting with single atoms and putting them together. A nano-sized
transistor (pictured on the left) would do essentially the same thing as a
regular sized one, but instead of needing multiple electrons to open a
single gate, only one would be required. So, this smaller computer
takes less energy due to fewer necessary electrons, and it will
calculate faster due to less space between transistors. This adds up to
a much more efficient computer. Science fiction? For now. But there
are students at the University of Arizona that think theyve got a working
transistor built using nanotechnology. They have yet to verify it, but if it
works, it will revolutionize computing (D. M. Cardamone, C. A. Stafford, S.
Mazumdar, http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0503540v1.pdf).

But one of the most amazing things Im looking forward to is the

advancement in the medical industry. Gone will be the days of being trapped
in a cramped room, surrounded by beeping machines and tangled wires.
Picture instead a patient lying in bed reading a book, the television in front of
him turned off. No machines around him, no tubes stuck in him to monitor
his heart rate, his brain activity, his blood sugar level. All this information is
being displayed elsewhere, with a nurse monitoring his condition from
another room. How could this be done? Imagine a tiny machine implanted
4

Cory Slaughter

through a needle directly into the patient that monitors all of these things,
and transmits that information over a wireless network. Its a ways off to be
sure, but the groundwork is being laid, as biochips are being designed to
monitor certain diseases in a person (Danny Meeto, Mike Lappin,
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=f4cca3e4-efd74630-b9fb-d36efb454670%40sessionmgr4002&vid=7&hid=4208).
Nanotechnology is the future. Were nearing the threshold of Moores
Law, and if we want our devices to keep getting smaller, this is the way its
going to happen. The advancement of medical technology may not play out
as Im hoping, but I can see this happening within the next 10-15 years
(assuming its not outlawed out of fear). It would benefit a lot of people.