Imagine a world where microscopic biomechanical devices are used to cure diseases, control our computers, and power the vehicles we drive. In this brave new world, minuscule techno-agents would have incredible computational power--power that is completely imperceptible to the human eye. Devices like these could become commonplace over the next fifty years as new innovations in molecular engineering--also known as nanotechnology--may help establish a new molecular age.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

            It’s an exciting prospect. Once processors and compatible systems become minuscule, computer innovation will increase dramatically. Imagine using a display made of thin transparent film that can be stretched across a table or wrapped around the dashboard of a car. Imagine using a mobile device that’s more powerful than a roomful of servers, yet can fit on your wrist or inside your wallet. In the future, embedded computers could provide wireless Internet browsing generated through a biomechanical implant in your eye. The only limits to this technology will be our own imagination and desires.

            Nanotechnology could become the most important scientific discovery since the internal-combustion engine, and it will change our view of computer technology in dramatic ways.

            Although most of these advances will be part of some distant future, we are--in a technical sense--already in the nanotechnology age, according to Marcyk. Intel is already shipping microprocessors with structures that measure less than 100 nanometers in size.

            A key component in nanotechnology is the ability for microscopic agents to self-replicate and self-assemble, something that has already occurred in lab environments. In fact, scientists have successfully manipulated a single atom and created materials with what Marcyk calls “quantum mechanical properties,” that is, the material’s properties are governed by atomic behavior instead of the bulk properties.

            For Intel, nanotechnology has become a reality that will complement and at some point, possibly replace silicon devices. Jose Maiz, an Intel researcher, has compared a key aspect of nanotechnology, namely the self assembly capability, to the human brain, which provides the microscopic processing power for rational thinking, creativity, and body control on just 10 watts of power. Maiz described the brain as a self-assembled, high performance, defect tolerant organ that consists of neurons and provides an alternative architecture example to the present silicon computers.

            In the human brain, microscopic cells cooperate and connect with each other to increase our overall memory and computational capacity. Nanotechnology works in a somewhat similar way. In one example, Maiz explained that thin graphite sheets self assemble to form carbon nanotubes (CNT), a molecular material one hundred times stronger than steel, with the thermal conductivity of diamonds. In another example, the self assembly properties of certain organic molecules can be used to construct a new material.

            Of course, the greatest challenge in nanotechnology is controlling the self-assembly process, something that has eluded many scientists.

            “The research on carbon nanotubes is certainly exciting,” said Marcyk. “The carbon nanotube structures exhibit some unique electrical and thermal properties which occur because of the lattice structure of the carbon. There still are huge problems, however, in growing CNTs in predictable ways to allow mass production of any practical electronic devices. We don’t foresee complex computer chips using CNTs in this decade.”

            The process of moving from concept to reality and, eventually, to the mass-production of nanotechnology-enabled devices is hugely complex, and producing an accurate timetable for results is unfeasible. We know that the technology holds promise, but mapping out that future in even general terms is no easy task.

            “First you’ve got to work out how to make things out of molecular-size pieces, then you’ve got to work out what to tell them to do,” said Peter Bentley, a fellow at the University College in London and author of the compelling pop-science book Digital Biology. “Controlling a few billion nanobots and making them all work together like the cells in our immune system or brain is immensely difficult.”

            Difficult, but not impossible. At IBM Research, scientists have developed a new storage device known as Millipede. The thin, organic polymer material can be used to store 500GB of data on a stamp-sized chip. Microscopic probes crawl across the storage media to activate pits that store data, using nanotechnology developed by IBM scientist Gerd Binnig in 1986. As a competitor to flash memory, Millipede-like technology could potentially be competitive with flash due to its smaller form factor.

            “With nanotechnology, today’s supercomputer could become tomorrow’s wristwatch personal assistant,” said Thomas Theis, director of physical science at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center.

            IBM has also experimented with CNTs as the eventual replacement for silicon processors. The concept was originally described in 1959 by Richard Feynman, a brilliant physicist at the California Institute of Technology. During a lecture, Feynman noted that engineers might be able to build new materials from the “bottom up,” meaning basically from nothing, rather than the normal “top down” approach of building things from other existing materials. IBM has seen Feynman’s vision and moved it from beyond just a theoretical concept.

            “There will be a smooth transition from microelectronics to nanoelectronics in silicon technology,” said Philip Wong, senior manager of Nanoscale Materials, Processes and Devices. “Silicon transistors are already in the nanometer regime and will continue their evolution well into the 10- to 20-nanometer range. The techniques for fabricating these somewhat conventional transistors will begin to draw upon the strengths of nanotechnology, such as chemical or molecular self-assembly, and perhaps nanoscale materials with unique properties.”

            One problem that science faces is an old one (relatively speaking): the computer. Nanotechnology has not devised a way for microscopic material to interoperate on a larger scale and interconnect with other computer circuitry.

            “The overall ability of computers to do real work will still be constrained by the slowest link in the computer,” said Glenn Sanders, vice president of business development at Rolltronics, a company that makes nanoscale memory devices. “Processing speeds will not realize their true potential until the bottlenecks are brought up to speed...there are some considerable obstacles to realizing the potential that nanotechnologies have promised, [e.g.,] a super computer the size of a sugar cube.”