The Ruse and the reality of nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology doesn't exist yet--not substantially--not compared to what's coming.

What exists today is nano-science. And it is the many, diverse, and substantial developments in nano-science that have created the buzz about future nanotechnology. The ability to literally see individual atoms, touch them, and even move at them at will, and the knowledge that electricity works differently when run through the tiniest wires, and the prospect of astoundingly small consumption of power and materials during the construction and use of nano-devices--those are the things creating the excitement. And the excitement is well-founded. There are many reasons to believe a nano-based technological revolution is coming.

Unfortunately, as happens when a complex subject gets summarized, some misconceptions have been popularized. There is a common notion now that anything will be possible given the new eyes and the new hands of the nanotechnologist. Fanciful pictures of "nanoassemblers," popularized by Eric Drexler promote that notion, but they are misleading, Chemistry is like a chess game. Just as rooks, pawns, and knights must move according to their own unique rules, particular elements must also obey fundamental and idiosyncratic bonding characteristics that no process or tool will allow us to violate.

Still, while nanotechnology is more constrained than some have suggested, there remains a vast scope for defining materials' properties and for creating complex functional assemblies using the new tools of nano-science. What are those tools? Certainly advanced microscopes are essential, but a great number of other techniques and approaches, not least theoretical methods, are indispensable too. As ever, the application of appropriate techniques to create directive feedback on preparative processes is key. Increasingly, we have a finer sense of the various constituents that make up any sample under study. This is a crucial aspect of nano-science--we see not only average properties, we also see the unique constituents that make up the average. My colleagues and I study particular states in silicon that have always been present but were previously impossible to see. Once we found those states could be recognized, we then learned to create them at will. We subsequently deployed those states to serve in radically new ways. The states we explored have been known for half a century as defects that inhibit traditional transistor operation. It turns out that the same entities are a benefit to (actually, the very core of) a new nano-scale transistor concept.

This selective strategy isn't unfamiliar. When we need a carpenter, we hire a carpenter--we don't hire 130 people knowing that 1 out of 130 people are carpenters and then ask the whole group to fix our door. But that's the way we employ materials today. Nano-science will allow more selective, and therefore improved and efficient use of materials for the particular job at hand.

Robert A. Wolkow, MCIC, holds the iCORE Chair of Nanoscale Information and Communications Technologies and is a professor of Physics at the University of Alberta. He is also principal research officer and Molecular Scale Devices program leader at the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton, AB.