lecture nano

8/6/2019 Lecture Nano

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Small Wonders The World of Nanoscience

Dr Horst Strmer Lecture

Czech Technical University

10/19/2006

Horst Strmer:

Good morning everybody, its a great pleasure to be here at the Czech

Technical University. Actually, its also a great pleasure to be in a country

where they know what an umlaut is and you have all these little hyphens and

bars on top of your letters and you know that theGermans have too. And

when I was born and I had two dots in my name and it disappeared in the

United States because Americans do not know how to handle umlauts. So, a

colleague of mine told me, Just drop them, they do not know how to do it.So, for twenty three years of my life that I lived in the United States, I didnt

have an umlaut and then we won the Nobel Prize and the Germans came

back and said, You do not have an umlaut? and I had to admit that I had

an umlaut so, ever since, I have had three times, once without an umlaut,

once with an oe and once with an umlaut which cut my publication record

by a factor of three! So its good to be in a country where you understand all

of these things that are on the top or the bottom of letters. Im really very

pleased to be here.

In fact, I was thinking about this as a technical University and thats

particularly why I appreciated it because, although all of my education and

training is in the sciences, I think deep down Im really an engineer. In fact,

Id probably be a much better engineer than a physicist! So, Im looking so

much forward to the things that were going to see tomorrow. I think,

maybe, already Sunday afternoon and Im sure that Im going to enjoy it

very much.

I said Im pleased to be here and Im pleased to be here in spite of the

schedule whichmeans that I have to give four hours of lectures. Ive donethis only once before in my life and, in fact, to disastrous results but, at the

end of the day, over dinner, I couldnt remember any more at what

University I was. Im sure this will not happen here because this is, of

course, going to be a very solid eventand I will have all of these impressions

that will not let me forget this University Im sure.


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What I would like to talk to you about, Im giving two lectures and I said

already Ill give you four hours of lectures and I hope, at the end of the day,

you will not be tired of me so this is a public lecture and, in the afternoon,

therell be a second lecture which will be a little bit more specialized but

dont be concerned about it. It still is a colloquial so I invite you all to join.

Its a bit more technical and much more to what I mostly actually do in

terms of research.

This public lecture is very much along the line of what Im doing with many

colleagues at Columbia and I want to give you a sort of broad overview of

what nanoscience is and I think where its going and why its so interesting.

In fact, at Columbia, we have a Nanoscience Centre which is funded by the

National Science Foundation. Its one of the first six that was funded. We

are about sixty people: about twenty faculty; about twenty students; about

twenty post grads. We particularly focus on the electronic properties on thenanoscale so the talk that I am giving you today is a public lecture. Its

meant for a very broad audience and it tries to point out where I think,

presently, the interesting aspects of nanoscience are and, more so, where

things are going in the long run.

So youve probably all heard about nano. Certainly around the university

its not a word that hasnt been heard before but nano really came on the

stage, I would say, just about ten years ago as something that was recognized

by a broader, I should say, the broader public to a degree which we all know

nowadays, well I suppose most students know what nano is ever since this

little gadget came on the market which is the IPOD Nano and, although this

is not really on the nano scale, it certainly is along the line of what nano

means in the meaning of the word its the new word for dwarf, its

something small. Not everything that is nano is really on the nano scale

because, of course, inside there are things that are not nano. Some of the

things that you see in a nano are not that serious. Here is something called a

Nano reef which is really just a very small aquarium with very small fish

in it. So the word nano is being used in many senses and not always along

the line of what nano actually means. And, as we all know, nano reallymeans just one billionth so, one nanosecond is one billionth of a second, a

nanogram one billionth of a gram and a nanobrain would be a very big

insult!

So, nano really means just one billionth and one billionth in the sense of a

meter and, although, as this audience is well aware what a nanometer is, I


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mean we should still put it on a scale. If you have one billionth of a meter, it

also means one millionth of a millimeter and one thousandth of a

micrometer. So, one nano is really just about what you can see on a

microscope because what you can see on a microscope is roughly, sort of a

micron. All the way down to the atomic scale but not quite to the atomic

scale. Its really above the atomic scale. A nanometer is about five to ten

atoms in a row and its actually a very important aspect. The nano scale and

the atomic scale is not the same scale. The nano scale is above the atomic

scale because it doesnt deal with individual atoms but it deals with an

assembly of atoms and that is what is the important aspect of it. When you

take an iron atom while it is in steel or you take an iron atom which is the

same iron atom and you look at it while its in hemoglobin, it is very very

different. It has a very different function in hemoglobin than it does in steel

and what makes the difference is, its not the atomic scale but slightly above

the atomic scale and the environment matters.

Its the first time that things can be put together and make something of

interest to us, so let me bring to you a movie that you have seen before and I

want to put this into a little bit of context of the length scales that were

familiar with. Ive shown you a movie. This is a movie pack of ten so every

slide shows you another pack of ten starting approximately at the scale of the

universe we are working one thousand times smaller than the scale of the

universe. I just want to put the nanoscale in perspective of all of these

length scales that we are dealing with.

So as were going down orders and orders of magnitude, the whole thing

always looks the same, just on different scales, and eventually at about ten to

the nine meters, we come up with something that were familiar with, the

Earth. And thats on the scale of about a hundred thousand kilometers and

as we go further down, were diving actually into Florida. This is a magnet

lab into Florida where were working quite often, a leaf and down into

beginning at a micrometer, one micrometer. So, this is the nanoscale: a

hundred nanometers, ten nanometers, one nanometer, and were diving into

an atom, into the nucleus and into the core and then we get into the nth scalebut we really dont know whats going on once we get to the nth scale. So,

on this length scale, from the size of the universe all the way down to the

sub-atomic scale, typically as a physicist, all of these length scales have their

particular attractions. And here we try and understand how the universe

came about, what dark matter is, what dark energy is nowadays. Down at

the other end of the length scale we find understand what mass is, how mass


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comes about how elementary particles come about and even much further

down, almost mathematics on somewhere string theory. Again, trying to

understand what happens on this length scale and the nanoscale sits

somewhere right smack in the middle.

So, what is so interesting about the nanoscale? To put it in one word, its

complexity. Its for the first time where you can put atoms together to

make some things which are called interesting, call it complex and we will

come back to this, but before doing this, let me actually agree the nanoscale

with this audience here or to this lecture hall.

So, let me just get a feel for how small the nanoscale is. So, let me do

something that I should do less and less often at my age and my hair color

which is pull out a hair. Ive found one! And we look at this hair which, at

least at my age, is about the smallest thing that you can see! I got two. Ishouldnt do this! This bodes poorly for my future. So, you pull out a hair.

This is about the smallest thing that you can see. Now imagine that we blow

up this hair to the size that you can touch the atoms which would make the

atoms as big as, well usually I would make the atoms as big as basketballs,

but, because were in Europe, well make them as big as soccer balls which

here is called football Im sure. Thats at least the way we call it in

Germany too. Football. So, we make it as big as a football.

So, this hair we now place on top of a CPU, just lying on top of CPU. Now

guess how big this hair is. Now guess how big this hair is. Now, sure, you

can all calculate it I know but just have a quick guess. How big is the hair?

This hair is now lying on us. Im standing under here. The hair is lying on

the University and covering Prague. How big is the hair if the atoms are as

big as soccer balls? Well, heres a map of Prague and this is how big a hair

would be if we blew up all the atoms to the size of soccer balls. No sun

from Vichy to Melnik No sun over Prague and thats only in this direction.

And thats all soccer balls and everything blocked out. So, this is as big as

just one hair would be if you had the atoms as big as soccer balls. Now, on

that scale, if the atoms are as big as soccer balls, the nanoscale is about thesize of this auditorium or about the size of this stage. So, this is the scale on

which one is operating when one is dealing with the nanoscale. And were

very comfortably operating nowadays on the nanoscale already.


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So, let me point out to you a little bit the challenges but also the

opportunities that exist on the nanoscale. So lets start out with an atom and,

of course, this is a very poor rendering of an atom

Heres an atom and I recall very distinctively in the early eighties having

been on a committee with Physics Today which is a publication of the

American Institute of Physics and having across from me sitting John

Hopdales who is a physicist but then also a biologist but he said at some

point, But atoms, atoms are boring! and I was shocked because, as a

physicist, I mean the atom is the demonstration of quantum mechanics. We

can measure everything, we can nowadays calculate most of the things. But

he said, But atoms are boring and, in a certain sense, hes right because an

atom is basically like a Lego block and, just like an individual Lego block, it

is not that interesting. This is actually the son of a colleague Colin Marples

whos a chemist demonstrating to you how interesting a single Lego blockis. Lego blocks by themselves are not interesting.

Whats interesting is what can be made out of them and I do not want to say

that atoms are boring but certainly what comes to be interesting is what you

can make of them and that doesnt happen on the scale of the individual

atom but it happens at a bigger scale so if the individual atom is boring or

not that interesting then let me show you something thats interesting. This

is only atoms and yet something comes out of it that you somehow wouldnt

be able to see in the atom. You can calculate the atom until the cows come

home but we would not imply the existence of something like that.

Let me show you something else whose existence we wouldnt imply form

the orbit of an atom and this is probably the most complex system in the

galaxy. I wouldnt go as far as saying the universe, maybe theres Klingons

out there! I dont know in addition to this so this is all made out of atoms

and you will say, Well, this is one hell of a lot of atoms so, sure, all hell

can break loose but, just look at this. This is a lot smaller and its all made

out of atoms and yet it has a lot of what the elephant is and the brain is and

certainly biology, go still smaller is a single cell organism. We still have alot of the characteristics of the elephant, the brain and its all made out of

atoms. We go still smaller and we get to a virus. Notice, were now on the

nanoscale of about a hundred nanometers and here is a virus and here we

cannot discuss this is the borderline between living and non-living matter. Is

it a life or is it just a very complex replicator? This is certainly happening

on the nanoscale. So you say, Well, sure, its biology, its complex and we


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know how complex it is. There is some quality that arises there that we

dont recognize in the atom and yet all of this is a combination of atoms, a

conglomeration of atoms put together in a complex way and then generating

mini matter but I would venture to say this is not just true form biology.

Look at this. Youll recognize this. Theres a lot of steel in there. And the

properties of steel are not determined on the scale of maybe a little atom but

they are determined on the nanoscale. You have to put a few atoms together

to make steel. The properties of this steel, whether its rust resistant,

flexibility, its strength, all this is determined on the nanoscale, not the atomic

scale, but already on the nanoscale.

Or look at this here, here is wood. Of course, this is dead matter but the

stability of wood, its resistance too, how it weathers, all of this, is

determined on the nanoscale, not on the atomic scale. Here is somethingelse, ceramics. If you look at ceramics, the crack resistance, its strength, its

flexibility, determined on the nanoscale, not on the atomic scale. But it is

the nanoscale that decides these material properties. So, macroscopic

material properties, whatever you look at - glass brick, T-shirts, bicycle

grease, whatever - is determined on the nanoscale. It is the first time we can

put atoms together to make something called interesting, something complex

which eventually determines the material properties on the very large scale.

Then, we say, Okay, fine, but this is very different from biology. Biology

is self assembled and this, well this is self assembled too. Were not taking

atoms and taking them under the microscope and putting atoms together and

making a brick out of it we just take

so self assembled. So, in this sense, its not that dissimilar and the first time

you can get something interesting, some complex material property or some

complex behavior is when you go up to the nanoscale and its actually very

much along the line of what a colleague of mine, Philip Anderson, once said,

Moore is different, Moore is not just the sum of the parts but its different.

Theres other, theres emerging properties coming out. There is something

happening there that we do not know how to describe yet. We may not beable to describe it. It may just be one rule after another. There may not just

be some brilliant law thats still to be uncovered. It may just be one rule

after another. But, coming back to this aspect, all this is self assembled and

its happening on the nanoscale.


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The nanoscale is also the scale where the discipline is nowadays and Ill give

an example from my metaphysics background. In the end of the last

century, sorry, game over. In the last century, before the last century, so in

the nineteenth century, we knew how to describe the single crystals and, at

the turn of the century, we were able to get X-ray pictures out of it and

nowadays we can actually move atoms around so this is a nanoscale at two

nanometers across so we are working on the nanoscale. In material science,

we know how to make silicon crystals, cut them into pieces do basic

lithography and working this out technologically on the nanoscale. The

chemists have gone somewhat the other way. The chemists have started out

with relatively simple molecules and they build up to more complex

molecules and, nowadays, are looking at how to assemble these complex

molecules into bigger entities. And heres, for example, something that

theyre working on and heres something called the nano mushroom where

you take molecules and you do a few (unintelligible) but youll get either orhydrogen bonds to make up entities that are on a bigger scale than the

individual molecule and that is on the nanoscale. And biology, too, came up

from species down to single cell organisms and, nowadays, ascribes the

properties and function of individual molecules and all of this happens at the

nanoscale.

The disciplines are talking to each other. The disciplines are learning each

others language which is often the most difficult part. Its not only in the

real world that language is a very strong boundary but also in the sciences.

We learn that similar kinds of mathematical methods can be used in the

different sciences and the boundaries between these sciences is actually the

most fertile ground for progress so the disciplinarity in our science is almost

anonymous and the interaction between chemistry and physics is one thats

very strong and were now building up interaction with biology which for

the last five years we havent done yet but there is very fertile ground.

So, if you talk about the nanoscale, you can come from different angles.

You can come from material science, biology, or from chemistry, or from

physics. With my background in physics, let me give you my perspective onit. I believe that the reason that we are nowadays so comfortable on the

nanoscale is actually this one. Im not sure whether youll recognize this.

Does anybody recognize this? This is the first transistor. This is the first

transistor as it was in 1947. Christmas Eve 1947. Christmas Eve 1947.

These people were working on Christmas Eve! And the size of this is about


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the size of an egg. Most of this is the holder. The actual bit is quite a bit

smaller but the whole thing is about as big as an egg.

So, this was in 1947 and here is what has happened since. This is the

itanium two chip and this thing has 220 million transistors and all of them

are working so, in roughly fifty, well sixty years, weve come from one

transistor to 220 million. In fact all of this, no most of this, is actually on the

nanoscale. I very much feel that this nanoscience nanotechnology is very

much furthered by the development in the silicon industry and the progress

is really enormous. This is a Moore plot which shows you the number of

transistors on a chip from one thousand, ten thousand up to one billion from

the 1970s to the year 2004. Oh, I extended it. This little thing doesnt exist

yet at the moment but you can see what its about.

Whats so impressive about this industry is that every eighteen months itincreases the number of transistors on the chip by a factor of two. So it

doubles every eighteen months and it has done this since the 1970s. Of

course, this is not a physical law but it has become a rule in the industry and

everybody is looking at this plot and tries to stay on it because if they dont

do it then their competitor will. So, implicitly, it became a law. So this is

the Moore plot. And, also, whats quite interesting is that every eighteen

months were making more transistors than we have ever made before

because a half plus a quarter plus an eighth. one plus a half plus a quarter

plus an eighth . So its enormous work this industry has achieved and

many of the features of these chips nowadays are only in the nanoscale. And

that Ill come back to.

But, before that, let me just point out once again how enormous the progress

of this industry has been and heres a comparison. Where would our cars be

if the progress in the car industry had been as fast as in the silicon industry?

What Im showing you here is a 1948 two door sedan, a car that the inventor

of the original transistor could have driven. It has four wheels, two

headlights etc. If you see the same car in 2006, it has four wheels, it has two

headlamps etc. If the progress in the car industry had been as rapid as in thesilicon industry then the car would weigh four grammes, it would have a

mileage of eighteen million miles to the gallon, it would have a speed of

twenty one million miles per hour, the trunk would have 410 cubic feet but

the most important part of this is that the cost would be only three dollars!

But it just demonstrates how incredible the process in this industry has been.


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So let me show you one of the, well, I shouldnt call it miracles but, in

terms of self assembly, one of the aspects of the silicon industry, that they

are growing now silicon crystals that are forty centimeters diameter, two

meters long and what is so amazing about it, after all I find that weve all

grown sugar crystals when we were kids but, nevertheless, in this crystal,

this is one crystal which means that if I take an atom down here and I count

1.3 million over here and I count 13.3 billion up here and another 6.4 billion,

its exact to an atom again. All of the atoms are exactly in the right place. I

mean its just strengthened my argument, this is self assembled. Were not

putting the atoms there. Mother Nature does this for us. This is almost a

miracle. These single crystals are then being sliced into these wafers and

then we make transistors out of them.

And heres one of the transistors. I show you this for a very special reason.

This is actually a picture that was taken, by now, almost ten years ago andvery hard to switch off arent they? So heres a transistor. I show this for

one particular reason. For one, as I say, this was ten years ago, the

experimental stage nowadays. This is the transistor size that we have in the

circuits and you see the length scale here, 60 nanometres so, so this is the

gate, oops, this is the gate so electrons are coming in here, now passing by

here and theyre going out there and you see theres a length scale here, 60

nanometres, so this is in the nanoscale. These transistors are nowadays on

the nanoscale and what I found most impressive about this picture is that, on

the same scale of which I see the whole device, I can see the individual

atoms. You probably cannot because its a little bit bright in here. We can

count the atoms from here to here as 382 so the scale on which you see the

whole device, we see the individual atoms. So, we people, we engineers,

particularly the engineers actually are very comfortable with dealing with

the nanoscale nowadays. This is most of what theyre doing.

There is another length scale in here that is the thickness of the silicon

dioxide, a thin insulating layer which is blown up here with of four atoms

thick. If you make it much thinner, then the electrons will actually quantum

mechanically through so we have quantum mechanics in our pockets. Soone cannot make them thinner than that so theres a limit here as why were

not quite down on this next scale in manufacturing . Were making billions

and billions of these on the nanoscale every day so the nanoscale is not

something foreign to engineering.


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Heres another one. This is, what I just showed you was in silicon, this is a

layer system made out of Gallium Aresnide, Aluminum Gallium Arsenide

which you really should look at thats just being two different semiconductor

levels. There we go, theres semiconductor level one and semiconductor

level two. The way this is being made is that they take a big vacuum vessel,

a big vessel, pump all of the gas out so that you dont have oxygen and

nitrogen anymore and then, then you load two ovens with semiconductor

number one and semiconductor number two and you evaporate it onto a

substrate which is a piece of semiconductor that you got by other means.

You can buy this.

So, theres a Gallium Arsenide substrate and you can evaporate

semiconductor one or semiconductor two onto it and here are these little

shutters, one thing on, one thing off etc, back and forth. In fact, when I

came to Bell which is now, I was working at Bell for twenty five years sothis was sometime in the seventies, this was still done by hand and what I

find absolutely amazing is that, by hand, you can grow a single layer of

semiconductor number one and then single layer of semiconductor number

two. So, you just stand there, operate this shutter and in about one second

you create one single atomic layer just by hand. So we already have our

hands on the nanoscale. Weve had them on the nano scale for quite a while.

But what the picture shows you is four layers, four layers of material number

one and four layers of material number two and this is of course on the

length scale of nanometers. What you can do with this and, as much as

silicon plays an important role in electronics Gallium Arsenide or even

Gallium Arsenide semiconductors play a role in, in the internet and

photonics or data transmission along glass fibers and these layers I just

showed you are essential for long distance transmission of light. So, what is

generated on the nanoscale is essential for our operation of the internet.

And heres a more complex one. This is Federico Capasso who has invented

something called the QCL laser, the quantum cascade laser, but the layers

that I showed you before are a little bit more complex and you create this

computer simulation and this laser has beautiful radiation patterns and theyare and will be more important in the future for sensing, remote sensing, of

environmental impact gases for example. So here, too, the nanoscale is

essential for the operation of the device. Now what I showed you is, these

layered structures and their impact on photonics, the word for long distance

communication via glass fibers. You can also use them for electronics, just

like you make these very thin electro layers in a silicon mosfet, a silicon


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transistor. You can also squeeze electrons between these white layers and

keep them out of the black layers. This is something I wont go into. You

can put a source and it rains, you can see the electrons coming in here and

going out there with a gate on top. So here is a transistor made out of

different materials and whats interesting about this one is the fastest and

quietest through this little world. In fact, its quite possible that quite a few

of you actually carry one of these little things in your pocket. This is called

a HEM transistor, high electrode mobility transistor and its very often the

first transistor in your cell phone because it, because its very quiet and very

fast which is what you want for a cellular telephone and theyre very often

also in, you see the receiving end of the antennas. So, again, the nanoscale

plays an important role.

So let me take these two dimensional systems and let me take this one stage

further and do this in a very superficial way but just to bring home howcomfortable we are, nowadays, operating on the nanoscale. Heres just an

example. Taking these sheets that we make by layer by layer growth of

different, of different semiconductors and you can break them up by

evaporating electrodes on top of the two dimensions and you see this scale is

a bar, a one micrometer bar and this is done with something called electron

beam lithography and by putting electric bias on there, we can crate little

puddles. So, there are two red puddles here, the red is painted in by me,

where this is a puddle that contains just one electron and this is a puddle that

contains one other electron and putting different voltages on, in fact, heres a

drawing and you see one electron sitting here and one electron sitting there

and the electrons have spin and, without going into the details of all of this,

we are now not just able to do electron ESR, electron spin resonance, with

individual electrons and we can operate with individual electrons and this is

a precursor to which I will come back to later in the afternoon for quantum

continuity. But we have become very comfortable with operating on

individual electrons, not only on their charge but even on their spin.

Let me show you another example, so this is really hands on quantum

mechanics. Heres another way of taking this two dimensional system thatwe have created and making smaller entities out of it by growing, for

example here, Indium Arsenide on top of Gallium Arsenide and these have

slightly different lattice constants so the atoms are arranged in a slightly

different way and, therefore, they grow these little hillocks. This is self

assembled. This is not something were doing from top down. This is

coming from the bottom up. It can create these little hillocks here so these


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are little quantum dots. You see them here and, again, a little here. They

create quantum dots on the nano scale and, in fact, this has been researched

quite extensively. We are thinking this might be a better source for

semiconductor lasers. Again, technology on the nano scale that is already

being pursued. Here is quantum dots made by chemistry and Im not much

of a chemist and, therefore, Im showing you that it is just being done in a

typical chemistry way which is in glass test tubes which is different from

what were using. Its actually a very cheap way of making quantum dots

and these are dots that in this case have the diameter of eight nanometres,

made out of semiconductor. I think this is (unintelligible) sulphide.

You see the individual atoms, the picture is taken of the individual atoms

and whats so fantastic about it, its just like your atom, you have the

different weight functions, now you have the different weight functions in

this sphere and the sphere acts like a mu atom, an atom contains electrons

and the energy of these electrons will depend on their size. So if you make avery small one, then their energy is high and if you make a big ball then the

energy is lower. What this leads to is, if you can make, if you just sort out

the right quantum dot, in actuality if you make small quantum dots they look

blue and big quantum dots, they look red. And, therefore, this property of

what is the color of it, does not depend on what the material is but what the

size is. Right? The material is always the same but by changing the size of

the material we actually change the property. In this case its what is its

color. So you ask what is this good for?

There are companies out there who are already selling this. This, by the way,

was invented by one of my colleagues Bruce who is now also at Colombia.

The companies out there who are selling it, its being used in biology to

encoat these materials, these quantum dots with antibodies so they go after a

particular protein. You can take different sized quantum dots, coat them

with different antibodies and the blue ones go to one protein, the green ones

go to another protein and, therefore, if you are now sampling biological

materials, different proteins will light up in a different color. This is of

course something that we can also do with dyes created by chemical means,

where the different colors are created by different site groups, but theadvantage of theses kind of dyes is that they are very robust, you can make

any color you want by just changing the size of it, they are very small,

typically non-toxic, thats of course something that is on the mind of very

many people now and they have many applications. So here is something

that comes out of nanotechnology, if you want, relatively easily, it has an

impact on biology immediately and maybe, maybe at some point beings as


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well. In fact, here is a quantum dot that with a coating of a certain antibody

that particularly accumulates in a liver and you see theres a, in a rat, you see

this. So in medical research, you see that it is already playing a role. So

again nanotechnology in medicine is already playing a role.

The spin of the electron is an important part of the electron that in todays

electronics is not being used as they are only looking at the charge, but there

are ways to look at the spin of the electron and there are projects that

envision that using the spin rather than the charge will allow us to go to

smaller device sizes at some point in the future. This is very much at the

forefront of research in meta physics.

So in terms of this layer structure I had talked to you most about applications

and let me just bring up one thing that is err, that I am associated with and

that is these layer structures are not only good for applications which theycertainly are in the optic and electronic industry, but if you make a sheet of

these electrons and put a very high magnetic field on it, then something very

strange is happening. The electron falls apart. What is happening if you

measure the charge of the electron afterwards the charge looks like it is

about a one third of the electronic charge so this is happening at very low

temperatures very close to absolute zero and very high magnetic fields to the

sense that if you were to take the transistor that is in your cell phone, you

would cool it down to almost absolute zero and put it in a very high

magnetic field, the electron cracks up.

Now that is very astonishing, because our colleagues at Columbia and also I

suppose here that in high energy have used the electrons and bombarded

them into anything and the electrons never break up. So electrons are

elementary particles to all intents and purposes and here under these

conditions actually they seem to break up and in fact this is what I will talk

more about this afternoon in my colloquial. This is actually called the Horne

effect and actually as some very interesting, even projected applications now

which just a few years back we wouldnt have thought, we would have

thought just a very interesting fundamental physics result but it seems tohave applications.

So if you can come this afternoon. I have actually a new graph here, but let

me see how much time do I have? I have 10 minutes, well actually I have

two hours but I do not want to hold you that long. So let me perhaps skip


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this new graph as you can see it as it is and Ill show you a bit more about

this, this afternoon.

Okay, so on the nanosphere, coming back to the nanosphere, well this was

all nanosphere but the matter, the matter assembles itself in ways in which it

wouldnt at the macroscopic scale, here is a few examples of it. Here is

some gold, gold layers on the nanoscale that look, look like they are

assembled in the way of pennies, This is alumina that has assembled itself in

a hexagonal way, here lead sulphite quantum dots have assembled

themselves in this hexagonal fashion. Zinc oxide, on a very small scale

forms these rings here and also these spirals here, all of this is happening on

the nanoscale. And what we know of this nowadays and we can see with an

electron microscope wondering if there is an application for it and I think

that this is still something to be found out. I think the poster child of this is

probably carbon, so here is carbon which we know as having twomodifications, one is diamond and the other is graphite, and graphite is of

course so interesting, well technologically important because there are sheets

of carbon that very easily glide against each other because in vertical

direction they are not covalently bonded, just in the other direction, the Z

direction, so they glide very easily, this is why we make grease out of them,

lubricants out of them, and the other one is diamonds which has other

applications

Then of course in the eighties we discovered Lucky Balls which I think was

a very, very exciting discovery for two reasons, I mean many reasons. I give

you two in addition to those that you may already think. Number one, I think

had you told people a few years before in scientific circles oh and by the

way carbon can also make soccer balls you would have been laughed out of

the room. This actually exists that Mother Nature would make something

like this. I think most of us wouldnt have left the room, The second thing is

that this is not something that we are making industrially, it is something

that was around through the aeons, in fact this stuff is in meteorites. So it has

been around all the time and we just didnt find it. So it took until the end of

the second millennium after Christ for humanity to find out that this isanother configuration of carbon. One of the interesting aspects about all of

this.

The more recently in about 1990 in Lima, found again using an electron

microscope, a nanotube that is really a rolled up carbon sheet and what is

interesting about is just remember what I told you before about the size of


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the material determines its color, here the property of the material is

determined by which way I roll up the graphite sheet. If I take the graphite

sheet and I roll it up in this way or I roll it up in this way it has a different

property. You see two graphite sheets from the side here, this is one that is

rolled up in this way and this is one that is rolled up this way. This is a

metal, this is a semi-conductor and it only depends on which way you roll up

the material, so again on the nanoscale, the way properties evolve depends

very critically in small variations in parameters.

We can grow nano tubes nowadays, almost like grass, this here is a picture

and we can make them extraordinarily long. This is, in fact, a result from

Phillip Kim, who is at Colombia, you see nanotubes growing from a catalyst

and all the way across you see nanotubes almost four centimeters long, so

nanotubes they are about 1 nanometre diameter but four centimeters long. In

fact, the reason that they are only four centimeters long is that is how longhis equipment was, he had to stop there otherwise they would have fallen off

the wall. So, in principle, you can grow these things longer, in fact much

longer than that. These tubes are already used in, in fact they have been

contemplated for their mechanical properties, here is a string made out of

nanotubes, here is a fabric actually woven out of nanotubes and even

artificial muscles are being considered made out of nanotubes in such an

environment. And of the, well most of the far off projection of using

nanotubes is a space elevator, where at some point if you have satellites,

probably in a geo-synchronous satellite standing out there, rather than

shooting a rocket up we actually have an elevator, using a string up, you can

pull up material and have the same command of material coming back down.

What is interesting is if you ever could make this, if you ever could make

this you cannot make it out of steel, because steel is too heavy and it would

just rip under its own weight. So if we ever can make this we need materials

such as nanotubes which is easier. You would need a blown up version to

make a space elevator and people are taking us quite seriously. And see if

we could make a rolled up tape of something like this if we are ever to make

a space elevator, so nanotubes have great implication for mechanics but not

only this they also have great implications for electronics.

I showed you this one before, this is a transistor 60 nanomentres and 180

atoms from one side to the other. This is a more recent one by Intel, 30

nanometres length, see the picture now, 20 nanometres, which is still

something in the future, its not yet in your laptop, but look at the size of this

nanotube compared to these transistors, this is an individual nanotube made


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of carbon and look how small it is, and then what people are thinking is that

we cannot use nanotubes for electronics. Here you see a nanotube lying

across four contacts thats being measured and people have made transistors

out of this. This is from the Hughes Group and here we see one nanometer,

sorry one nanotube, lying across two contacts. Here is another one from

IBM. This is actually a bi-polar, the other one is piezo in the back here you

see a nanotube lying across and this is just a schematic, okay, so one can

make transistors out of nanotubes and, interestingly enough, their properties

are better than those of silicon.

So in fact in the United States, Intel are taking this very seriously and are

supporting research in this direction, where the nanotube could at some point

replace silicon in the channel of fets.

The trouble of course is that you do not know how to put the nanotubes intothe right place first of all you need a lot of them in parallel to get the

conductor that we want and, second, how do we actually put them there?

We have to grow them so chemists are trying to figure out how do we grow

nanotubes in exactly the right place, and we are far from it. But the

properties of the individual nanotube are now very similar to those of silicon

so its very promising.

Ah, here is actually something that we did, just a next step this is something

that we did in the Nanocentre. We took a nanotube, this is a nanotube and

we cut it open and we placed in this opening with one individual molecule.

We were able to place one individual molecule in there and in this case this

is a metallic and this is a metallic nanotube, so this is a contact and this is a

contact and then this one molecule acts, acted as a transistor, just one

molecule acting as a transistor.

- Video disrupted -

Let me tell you about my immense amazement about this one gizmo that I

think that nowadays I think that the people here will all be familiar with but Ifound it just an incredible, incredible leap of confidence that at some point

was made, in fact by Gurt Biddich who is a, with who I studied together at

the University of Frankfurt. We were on the same row, next to each other,

What Gurt did, or rather though of, this incredible thought he sprung. If you

take two objects and you put them close to each other ever so gently, closer

and closer and closer, at some point just when they are touching, the


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touching is just one atom from the left and one atom from the right. And

this is another one of these examples where probably a few years before

people would have said, how are you going to look how this happens?

Thats not something that you would theoretically think about, not really the

way you want to do it. Yes you can. Now only using one hundredth, so again

using my hair and if you think of making anything, if you think of making a

sharp tip on the nanoscale, on a scale where the atoms are as big as soccer

balls, then probably the sharpest thing that you can make is a (unintelligible)

like that again. You may recognize this one so if I make this out of atoms

then it may look like this and there is always one atom that is sticking out

the most and here is the top and I see one atom that is sticking out and if I

take this and move it along the hair I can probe, I can see the atoms. This

actually works, and yes some of the students here will say I have one of

these in my lab. I push the buttons and it comes out. I tell you, in 1983, I

think this was not a possibility. You can do this very confidently now.Really its nothing else more than just a gramophone, a very fine

gramophone.

Let me just skip through the movie thing and not only can you look at things

but you can move atoms around. Here you see the surface of copper and I

think that its actually carbon monoxide that sitting up there, so think of it as

an atom. Its just a very small molecule and you see that someone has

already done the job on it, and if you look 6 hours later, 12 hours later, 24

hours later you get what is called the quantum coral which is circles of

copper and carbon monoxide based in a circle around it and my point is that

the feed itself made putting this together mind-boggling. What I find most

mind-boggling is that you see these waves and these are just the electron

waves as we know them in quantum mechanics and you can actually see

this. Again is something that wasnt obvious at all that you could actually

dive in and observe on the nanoscale things in such detail. That is once you

have colored it in, it looks even more gorgeous than it does just from the

electron microscope.

Let me come back to the last few minutes, a major subject of my lecture, Itold you a lot about the nanoscale and things like quantum dots and three

dimensional electrons and finally about the nanotube and that it has big

implications for mechanics and probably electronics but in a certain sense

along the lines of John Hopkins statement but its boring, this is still after

all relatively, well very boring. We walk along a nanotube and all you see is

carbon atoms, carbon atoms and put you in any place and you look around


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and think this looks like a lost place and on the same scale if you put DNA

which is the same scale, DNA is really complex, right? Obviously, the

information of life is written into it, the local environment is very different

as you go along, so this is interesting in that sense whereas this is very

boring and what DNA can make for example are things like us, it makes

them very cheaply. Heres a biological product, what is it, fresh baby

artichokes, so artichokes, just done by Mother Nature by self assembly. This

is how we assemble things, this is top down, a different pattern I would think

and it is a very different process. So whats missing sort of in electronics,

what we still havent figured out how to do is how to grow our cell phones

on trees. If you had a laptop that was about to die, you would sprout a

flower take the seeds, put them in the ground and in the next week, harvest

the laptop! Mother Nature does just that. So why not? You say its not

possible. This maybe asking a little bit too much, you want to grow a whole

laptop? Okay, fine, I give you a cell phone, although cell phones areactually more complicated than your laptops are. So lets take just a chip,

can we grow a chip on a tree? Well even a circuit, I just give you a memory

cell. Okay, how about we really put it down, can I make one transistor, can I

grow just one transistor on a tree? Yep, there it is. Alright? This is a model

that was assembled by my colleague Colin Marples that acts a transistor,

electrons are coming in here, going out there and if I apply a voltage to this

thing it would drop the electron flow. This is grown on a tree, this is a

transistor made by Mother Nature made by self assembly. All identical up

to the last atom, it probably cost about a buck to assemble 43 of them so

silicon, eat you heart out, you are so proud that it is 0.001 cents per transistor

that is a few orders of magnitude cheaper. So this is a transistor, so lets

make wires. Well wires, I can grow them on trees. I showed you all a wire

that is 4cm long, it is more conductive than copper and it is stronger than

steel. What else do you want? So silicon, eat your heart out.

Now of course you know thats not the problem. The crux of the matter is

not to make the switches, the crux of the matter is not to make the wires, the

crux is the viability. It is not how to make the components it is how to put

the stuff together and, in a sense, to put this aside I find the expressionsilicon industry a misnomer. It really should be called lithography industry

except you would have such a hard time pronouncing. That is the defining,

this is the defining technology, we could probably use other semi

conductors, lots of other semi conductors, had we put as much effort into

gallium arsenide it probably would be as far as silicon, the real thing is how

to put the stuff together, its the (unintelligible)


19/34

Right and there is only two ways of putting things together, complex things

on earth, one is (unintelligible) where we are walking round in masks like

Halloween and finally come up with devices like this. Mother Nature does it

rather differently. Here is a Sequoia tree, here is scene of a sequoia tree and

you would wait about 200 years to develop another tree. It is a very different

way of assembling things. So you could say, okay, we are making great

progress over here, lets just leave it to biology. Self assembly, this is a

fantastic way of assembling things, all hands off, just leave it to biology. I

believe that this is not so. There are big ethical reasons. I think in particular

when it comes to electronics for doing data processing and so on, leaving

that to biology would create lots of ethical reasons. You wouldnt want your

dog to be smarter than you, well some people maybe. So I think fiddling

around with the genome in this respect is probably something that we would

have big difficulties with, well thats one, there is another one.

Biological data processors in my mind are made of very lousy components

and as much as I am sitting here with electrical engineers you may actually

agree with me that the neuron is an awkward, an awkward object. It

transmits signals by basically a bucket brigade, handing it down and thereby

eventually telling the end that something has happened at the beginning.

The speed is about 10 100metres per second, whereas we are typically

transmitting at the speed of light and the switching process is awkward

where a few dozen or hundreds of little vesicles have to cross some cleft,

some synaptic cleft come to the other side and transmit the signal. So we

should be able to do better than that. You may consider this to be heresy, but

I am not sure because when we concentrate on something, some particular

priorities, we are doing very well. We can argue whether we should also be

able to do better in terms of data processing. And by the way this very

simplistic calculation, although I dont think it is that much or that long. Our

brain has 1015

synapses so it does about 1017

operations per second,

something like that, you can argue a factor of ten or even a hundred with me.

Your Pentium chip is about the same. You may wonder about how you canthink about the origin of the universe whereas my Pentium chip in my laptop

can barely run PowerPoint and it results in a poor usage of these transistors

so architecture and software is something that is very important. So how can

we go about it if we dont use biology? I think that there is at least two

approaches. One is to use biological materials in another context. So this is

not biology but use of biologically made materials and let me show you one


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such example. This is using DNA as a smart molecule. This is actually

artificial DNA. This is not coming out of any cell and not protected by any

DNA exemplars these days. This is actually out of Max Seaman down at

NYU, just about a subway ride from us. He looks at the DNA as a molecule

and the addresses in it, and if you address it right you take the sequencer and

you make a molecule out of it thinking about how it should assemble. We

are just putting the right sequence into it and then pouring it into a glass, you

get for example, this is not a typical double stranded DNA, you get this knot

out of it. Here is another knot and here is a third knot, this is very important

because it is programs, right, he programs it in he doesnt twist it around, he

pours it in and these knots come out by themselves. This is a geometry that

is created in a big machine but in a linear version and then the thing

assembles itself in this knot. The most complex structure here is this Q

made out of DNA programmed on the outside and then self assembled. It is

all hands off.

Here is another example. These are actually sheets made out of DNA.

Strangely enough, by putting these cross connectors on to it you can make

sheets out of it, In the end you pour it in, you can make a two dimensional

sheet. You can program certain spots along the sheet that is just where you

fix and bolt nanoclusters and you see here that the green thing is the sheet of

DNA and the nanoclusters are sticking up there. The thought behind that is

that it quickly, thats all on the nanoscale, that quickly a two dimensional

scaffolding in order to build up later put circuits on top of it, self assembly.

Here is probably the most ambitious of it. Here is work done by Uri Simone

At the Technium in Israel where he wants to make electronic circuits self

assembly. So here are the edges of the circuit, this is gold and there is a

single strand of DNA attached to it that would have all different addresses.

Then he pours in the complement. So this is our DNA that has two

complementary addresses and they find their way. This is one that is

programmed for example. This is programmed to go form here to here and

eventually it finds it way. It makes its pattern which is preprogrammed but it

has assembled itself, you can even be thinking even and I am going to showyou in a second, of putting devices down because you have addresses on the

DNA onto which you can place devices and eventually he ends up with a

circuit that is self assembled.

Here is an example of it, you can make a nanowire, it goes to an address

here and an address here, the DNA across makes a wire out of it and you can


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even place a carbon nanotube transistor, a carbon nanotube that acts as a

transistor, so in this way you can make a transistor self assembled using

DNA that finds its place and using a carbon nanotube that finds its way.

Here is a picture of it. Its a very, very lousy transistor, it really has not a lot

to speak of, but it is self assembled. It assembled itself by just programming

the position in, in the first place. So thats number one.

Number two is to start from square one and that would be for example self

assembly of the molecules and this does not have a name. It is just

chemistry and as much as I flunked chemistry as a student I am in deep

admiration of chemists nowadays. My colleague Colin Marple, father of the

young guy we saw earlier said, tell me what you want and Ill make it.

Now hes young and probably a little bit overestimating his wizardry, but

there is a lot of truth to it. Chemists can do extraordinary things. Ill just

show you some other structures that we dont make and then discover them,but they really design them to be this way. So chemistry is one, but if you go

beyond chemistry, they call this super molecular chemistry.

You now take molecules and assemble them into bigger structures. There is

one and its most amazing. There is a chain and there is one molecule

walking along it, just walking along it and actually creating a product that is

then attached to the chain so its like a molecule walking along another

molecule. So, if you combine the super molecular chemistry that can play

with molecules and make structures that are not also static but also dynamic

then you add to this the atomic source microscope being able to measure

forces on very small scales, being able to affect things on very small scales,

which I would call super molecular physics. If you put these two together,

this is what is really in my mind at the heart of nanoscience.

Therefore, self assembly is an essential challenge to nanoscience, but you

need to learn the simple rules from biology and apply them to non-biological

studies. You have to learn the rule of the molecule-molecule game and not

only in biology but also in the non-biological sciences. You have to learn

how to make copies and templates and all of the other things that biologycan do so well and if we explore this we are not going to (unintelligible)

ambient pressure (unintelligible) we can do it on the surface of material for

example. So if you look particularly at the challenge with regard to

electronics, they must be simple non-biological substances that are self-

assembled and the electric properties are essential. Nature is largely

ignorant of electronics, all of the electronic properties, so called electronic


22/34

properties going on all over our brain and our body are largely ionic. They

are not electronic, we need to keep our eye on electronic properties. So at

some point in the future we should be able to combine silicon technology,

which is wonderful and will not just sort of go away at some point, actually

it may stay forever. The silicon technology will allow at its edges the

intelligence is in the process, but at the edges you should be able to assemble

ready made molecular memory cells that the silicon processor will actually

assemble out of the liquid. So that the self assembled aspect of this

technology will start at the edges and perhaps over time would creep in. So,

with all this, why not? Why shouldnt we at some point be able grow a new

laptop or a cell phone on a tree? Thanks very much.

Floor open to questions.

Prof. Strmer: I was hoping for enlightening discussion so we have, well wehave another hour almost so please do.

Question: Please sir, what is your opinion about teaching of nanoscience or

nanotechnology in university. Please sir what do you think about the

structure of teaching or study of nanoscience and nanotechnology?

Prof. Strmer: That is a very good question. Thanks very much. I think you

all heard the question, right?

The question was about education in nanoscience at university

I think as I showed you before that I, where nanoscience, where the

disciplines meet. I think you also have to teach this between disciplines.

Nanoscience is not something that can be evolved by physicists, not

something that can be evolved by chemists, not by biologists and not by

electrical engineers or mechanical engineers, but we have to all come

together. This is very hard to do. I cannot judge how hard it would be at your

university but it is hard at our university. I think that in general, probably inmost education systems in a sense we are stuck with the disciplines as we

created them last, last century and before that. So when we split up natural

sciences into chemistry and physics and biology and the engineering

sciences yet in another place.


23/34

And in another scheme all of this is coming together, our students move to

have an exposure to all of this, to much of this in order to be effective in

sciences and this is very hard to achieve between departments in

universities. And I dont think that there is a golden way of doing it. It is

something that we have to create from the bottom up, just as much as we are

thinking about bottom up assembly we have to create it from the bottom up.

It is, as very often the case, you need a few individuals that are excited about

something to just go ahead and do it. At Columbia there are a few lecturers

now that are co-taught between physicists and chemists, which is a good

start. We have also a mechanical engineer who is doing this with a bio-

physicist sharing a lecture. This is baby steps but I think eventually we have

to, we have to be able to teach this on a much broader scale and I am not

sure how to do it. The best, I believe is that if there is a set of individuals

that believe in this and then just create their own curriculum. I find that the

students are very willing followers. In fact you could call it the other wayaround. The students are coming to ask us, How am I going to do this? We

have, I think, I remember meetings we have in the Nanocentre, where

chemists are coming over and saying, Professor Strmer, and by the way

they all call me Horst, Whats the physics course that I should take so that I

get a good insight into chemistry? So the chemists are coming to us and I

hope the physicists are coming to the chemists. So it its from the bottom

up, it will not be from the administration down. But it is the young people

who are requesting this and well have to find ways to respond to that and

its true it was in the present departmental structures at the university, so

well have to overcome it.

Speaker: Next?

Prof. Strmer: I promise the next time Ill be a little bit shorter!

Question: What about Carbon nanotube transistors?

Prof Strmer: Carbon nanotube transistors, yes?

Question: By much how are they better than silicon, do you think it can be

better..? PH Speaks over.

Prof Strmer: They have sharper (unintelligible) so for a given voltage they

would have less leakage from them. I do not know, I do not have the number

in my head. But they are significantly better that IBM has started a


24/34

engineering group actually working on carbon nanotubes, so this is an effort

of about five or six people so they are taking it very seriously. In fact there is

even an Intel group looking into this. But let me point out again, I dont

know who asked that, but let me point out again, the important aspect of this

or the difficult aspect of this is not how you make this stuff, the difficult

aspect is how to place these carbon nanotubes where you want them. You

have a great way of putting a transistor where I want it, by using

photolithography, we have no great way to put a carbon nanotube

someplace. Nowadays we are using an atomic force microscope and slowly

nudging them into place. This is not a large scale manufacturing

chronology, you have to find ways how to do this and I am not sure that we

will. They may be incompatible with circuits, its not clear whether we can.

But then again we wouldnt have thought there was a carbon nanotube in the

first place, so who knows?

Any questions?

Question: Do you think that about the extrapolation of Moores law

(unintelligible) reach atomic size?

Prof Strmer: Yes, that is a very good question. The question is about the

extrapolation of Moores law . Let me tell you a little story about it, its a

short story.

I go to a conference every two years, sometimes every three years, which is

called the future of, its not silicon technologies, its called, well lets call it

the future of silicon. And about ten years ago I was invited to chair a round

table discussion about the future of silicon, more than ten years, fifteen years

ago. You get the usual discussion, everybody is saying, well giving their

own opinion about it, it was not clear how much progress was being made at

that point so I thought instead of having a panel we just go into vote. So we

had about 50 people there and we were voting, when is silicon going to run

out of steam. Well it turns out it was about 5 years from now. We had the

same conference again last year. I wasnt there but my colleague took thepoll. Guess what? Five years from now. So this is now fifteen years in

between, but I think the arguments are getting stronger and stronger that

about, well I would think no more than ten years from now probably. I

mean there is good reason to believe that ten years from now, its hard. But

again, engineers and technologies have come around to overcome so many

revolutions, in the 70s who would have thought that a micron would now be


25/34

20 nanometres. Its incredible so I wouldnt venture to say that it is not, but

Ill venture to say one thing, it will stop.

There is a question back there. If you just say it, I can repeat it.

Question: Horst can you pretend again that you were a first year post-doc,

which topic would you pick now?

Prof. Strmer: If I were a first year..

Question: a first year post doc in condensed matter of training

Prof Strmer: If I were a first year condensed matter post doc, which topic

would I pick?

I have admission to make. For my last, of my last three graduate students,

one went to Cornell and worked with carbon nanotubes, she is now a

professor at Penn State, The second one went to Illinois became a bio-

physicist and the third one is just coming back from a trip to Berkeley and

tells me that she has an offer to become a bio-physicist.. So I am not sure

what this is telling you, but my wife is telling me that I am a lousy teacher.

But I think that is whats happening and I dont discourage my students.

Never mind bio-physics, I think its the inter-disciplinarity. I look very

much as a condensed matter physicist. I look very much that I have as least

as much connection to the chemistry department as I have to my high energy

physicists. What we are really working on nowadays and I am convinced it

is working on the nanoscale and what my chemists are talking to me about is

very much what I am talking about. So I believe inter-disciplinarity is really

the order of the day. So if I was a post doc condensed matter physicist then I

would go and do something that is at the border of something else, which for

example means that I would do bio-physics, working perhaps with a group

that does condensed matter chemistry, materials science. I think its the

boundaries where the excitement is and where we will be the future. It will

have an impact on science, on technology no doubt, but it will also have animpact on teaching. I think it will a huge impact on how the departments for

arts and sciences and engineers will be put together. I believe in ten years it

will not look the same anymore. It was a long answer and a little bit evasive,

but okay, right bio.. hyphenated physics!

Question.


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Question: Yes I am from the mechanical department

(unintelligible)(unintelligible)

Prof Strmer: You say, let me see whether I can re-cast the question because

there is a lot of room there. You are saying that there is lots of talk about

nanoscience and err, but its very hard to implement a lot of it.

I agree with you. I am of two minds on this. The one is I agree with you that

the word nano, in many cases, is very much hyped, its over hyped.

Everybody thinks, even government thinks and looks into whether they are

falling behind in nanoscience, the funding agencies listen up, if you do not

have the word nano in your next proposal then you do not get funded. But I

think that this is really unfortunate. That does not say that nano itself really

does have a place in the world or in the world of science. I believe that, Istrongly believe that nanoscience will have a huge impact and, therefore, we

have to go ahead with it. We have to pursue it. If it is in an area where there

is lots of hype it is ours, particularly the most senior peoples job to put

things in perspective. So if you make a connection with the already existing

nanoscience or what you call it or the technology that is out there that is

nano or chemistry that is nano and otherwise but just stonily pursue it. I

dont think it is so that all of nano is hyped, certainly not .

(Video disrupted)

Its an exciting time, a very exciting time. At some point you will look back

to the late 90s of the last century and all of this started up.

There is a question back there, Oh sorry here, yes please.

Question: You mentioned the United States, what about here, is there a good

support to continue this research in Europe or how you say?

Prof Strmer: Is there good support for research in the United States or inEurope?

Question: Europe in comparison with the United States

Prof Strmer: How does research funding compare between Europe and the

United States are you asking that?


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Question: What is the background, the environment to nanoscience?

Prof Strmer: Oh, oh particularly for nano. Actually I feel that it is very

good. On the scale of things, I mean first of all you have to look at research

funding in general. We scientists are always complaining that we are not

getting enough and the administration always says that we are getting too

much. So I think that there is healthy competition and we have to keep it up

on both sides, it makes us honest in a way. So I would think that the funding

in nano is actually very good on the scale of things, now everybody would

like to have more money to build the next new submarine or to build the

next x-ray satellite or to pursue condensed molecular chemistry or whatever

but I think that scale actually nano is funded very well. It has been funded

very well in the United States over time and I say that if you dont have the

word nano in your proposal then you wont get funded which is animplication of that, unfortunately. I think actually in Europe from what I

understand, nano is funded similarly well, the word nano is something that

applies to all of these funding agencies, the world inter disciplinarity fund

and as much again that much of this hype is fortunate, so we are all being

funded relatively well. I can tell you many stories of people who were under

funded but I listen to other colleagues who have gone away from nano and

their stories are worse. So I would think that funding for nano in the United

States and Europe is good compared to general science funding. I think we

should have more science funding in general. I think that this is a way to

solve a lot of our difficulties but I think on a relative scale. I think its well

and comparable between Europe and the United States.

There was a question there.

Question: Part of this business is nano problems start eight years ago, this

construction of nanostructures and nanobodies started at (unintelligible) in

the States and then ended up at (unintelligible) in Germany. We know the

results of this nanotechnology ceramics parts for the space shuttle for

example. Now the time is looking like drawing at hand for the materialresearch and they try to switch it to the biology and medicine. How you see

the progress in this field? Do you think you can wait such tremendous

progress like material research?

Prof Strmer: Well I do not believe that nano is at the end of its road in

material science. I really dont believe. I mean as much as you pointed out


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ceramics, I think there are many other materials. Look, I deeply believe and

I dont think that you would disagree, macroscopic material properties

anything surrounding that, is interpreted on the nano scale and if you find

ways of modifying that on the nano scale we have huge margins on the

macroscopic scale to change material sciences. I think, I think weve just

skimmed the cream so far. Its the easy low hanging fruits that we have so

far. I do not see the end of material science at all. It will get harder Im

sure. Right, I know thats what the whole overhanging fruit. I do not

believe that we wont make progress by combining mechanic and transport

structures, getting combined improvement where we get very strong

materials with still high electronic transportation properties. I dont see that

at all. I just think its going to get harder as it always does in the sciences as

I think mydiploma in Frankfurt always said, If it were easy, it would be

dull. Along the lines of biology, I strongly believe that, that nano will have

a big impact on biology and vice versa and I dont even look at it as one orthe other. I would think that its biologists and chemists and mechanical

engineers and physicists coming together and tackling, tackling questions in

biology that the biologists by themselves cannot do, that the physicists

couldnt tackle. You need all of this input so I, I believe that nanoscience

has a great future in biology. Right, its the right length scale, its a very

interesting problem set. Its, we can address it in the condensed metaphysics

community, in the chemistry community, in the biology community and

theres a follow up question. Go ahead.

Question: May I interrupt you? My question was this. You in the States

started with nanotechnology twenty years before Europe because you started

in the early eighties. Now we find that nanotechnology would provide an

application now because the Europe Union paid the money for this and we

said, Now. Look they said, They have invented this before already.

They said, Space shuttle technology already uses nanotechnology and you

have experience also in the bio. We start now reaching up their

nanotechnology but the migration was a little bit to, to application, to the

biology because you already have twenty to fifteen years before so this was

why I asked.

Prof Strmer: So youre saying in material science we see already

applications and what, since all of this started twenty years ago, wheres the

applications in biology, is that your question?

Audience: Yes


29/34

Prof Strmer: Wheres the impact on biology? Well again, you saw the

example of quantum nano dots that are used in biology.

Theres an application. These nano dots are being used in other settings, for

example you have specific absorptions that are possibly of interest for

treatment of individual cells that absorb a particular energy at a particular

frequency so I think were just at the beginning of it. Look, twenty years is

not that long nowadays. I mean twenty years of research until you actually

get into a clinical setting is not a long time.

Speaker: I hope there is a question in the upper room.

Prof Strmer: Ah!

Speaker: So Ill try to switch over there.

Prof Strmer: Sir, sir, we do not hear you. We have to switch on your

microphone.

Question: Good morning, can you hear me now?

Prof Strmer: Can you speak a little bit louder?

Question: Louder than this? This is a very basic question but, firstly, I need

an answer. Do you hear me?

Prof Strmer: Sorry I missed it.

Speaker: You have to speak up. Speak loudly.

Question: Louder than this?

Prof Strmer: Okay, its okay.

Question: This is very basic question. I had a chance to work during my

Bachelors study on the basics of nanoscience. Now the problem was that it

was very difficult to touch the basic concepts. In order to learn how to apply

the concepts, you must know what are the concepts and it involves studying

basic solid state physics and I also I found that all the roads lead to quantum


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mechanics in the end. For an electrical engineer, its a little bit difficult to

get acquainted with all the things in a deep way and there are some basic

questions that I wont mention now and it took me to three students in

Prague just to find the answer. Of course, in the end, I did struggle. So,

from you, I have the question that how a student can get well acquainted

with the principles and applications of nanoscience in a good time, in finite

time, because there are other subjects which also must be tackled but can

you tell us the short way how an inquisitive student can make it?

Speaker: Your question is clear.

Audience: Thank you

Prof Strmer: I appreciate that it was a simple question and it all came

through. Again, I mean we have mentioned before how are you going toteach nanoscience which Im trying to look at you when I think theres

probably a camera there I think a question very similar was raised before.

How do you teach nanoscience and are we going to teach the next generation

of students and how do we do it? I think your question is along this line and,

as I said before, I do not think I have a kings pass and I think youre a very

good example of showing us that its the students who are telling us what we

have to do. It will not come down from the administration about how

theyre going to teach nanoscience until students are coming to our office

and asking exactly the kind of question that you are asking and well have

to I do not have a kings pass on how to do this. If you ask specifically, I

mean if you were to ask specifically and came to my office and asked how

do I, how do I get into quantum mechanics, what course should I take in

order to understand a little bit of quantum mechanics, the ones that I need for

an electrical engineer, I would be able to give you advice and say, Take the

course of Professor XYZ because I think he treats it in a way that is

appropriate for what you want to get out of it, but I do not have a general

work study. I cannot tell you take the nanoscience curriculum at Columbia.

We do not have it. I think, in a sense, it is very good that you ask this

question because there is a professor sitting in this audience and it will havethe impact to hear from you as one individual as to where you want to go

and what people more senior have to do in the future in order to educate it

the way you want to educate it and you told them already what is out there.

Question: You mentioned that Moore is different. Is there out there

somewhere some basic nanophysics laws which emerge on the microscopic


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functions and, more to the previous question, do you hope that nano

(unintelligible)_

Prof Strmer: All those are excellent questions. I do not have the answer. I

think that this is, well, okay, let me repeat the question if I can. The

question is that I brought up Moore is different and the reason that youre

asking me the question is where are we on that scale, how different is it and

where are the nanoscience laws? And Im afraid to tell you, we dont know

but Im happy to tell you, we want to know and we want to figure out, and I

think, let me put it this way, I think this is at the heart if nanoscience, this is

exactly what we need to figure out, this is exactly the challenge I think of

this century in this area. You asked for what are the laws of the nanoscale,

we dont know. We dont know and its not clear. As I said before, its not

clear whether there are laws. It may be just one rule after the other. Theres

this rule and this rule and if you do that then you get that. Right, we may beat the end of the laws, at least on this field. Im not saying at the end of

science but we may be at the end of laws. There may be not a

(unintelligible) equation, there may be not another equation, just rule after

rule after rule which sounds non-satisfactory. Course of all, I may be wrong

and there may be really laws which we havent discovered yet. Im afraid

there may be not any laws. Then well wonder where science is going, what

science means because were always out there looking for the next big

equation and (unintelligible)

can take us some place but it doesnt have any impact in nanoscience.

Right? There may be things that we discover about dark energy that we

dont know yet but, on the scale of nano science, we may just not have other

laws. We have lots of rules that we discovered, then you wonder where

were heading.

Sorry, theres another question.

Question: I have one question concerning the question of a fellow student

I know him.

Prof Strmer: I think you should use a microphone because I think nobody

can hear.

Audience: The new curricula of the new program of nanoscience was

initiated by our lecturer and I am in the team of people who initiated this

curricula and we are very happy that, in our university, we are not only


32/34

studying chemistry and physics but biological department, biomedicine

department and across the street, we have a list including chemical

technology and includes many courses that are indexed in biology and

chemistry as a part of nanoscience. We would be happy to have good hands

in this background, good curricula.

Prof Strmer: I understand that the next year you will celebrate your 300th

anniversary. Im coming from Columbia where we just celebrated our 250th

anniversary two years ago. Youre always ahead of us! Its great, I mean

thats wonderful news.

Question: Can you explain..

Prof Strmer: Can you explain, in terms of the purity of the reaction? No,

Im afraid Im not enough of a chemist to do this. I know at some point Isaid 10 to the power of 23 molecules for ten dollars and theyre all identical.

Of course, theyre not and that is a big issue.

Chemists know that they do not have 100% success in their synthesis so

these are certainly things that somebody has to tackle but I would not be able

to give you an answer. This seems to be much more a chemists issue than it

is a physicists.

Prof Strmer: Okay, Im sorry, I misunderstood, youre asking about the

health implication? Okay, sorry, youre bringing up an interesting point.

Sorry I misunderstood. I think that the point that youre bringing up is

whether on the nano scale, if we are creating objects on the nano scale, what

will be the impact on biology in general and, perhaps, health sciences and

health? Its a question that is being asked in the United States more and

more and I think its very good that its being asked, I mean one of the

concerns, for example, whether the nano tubes have similar kind of effects

as asbestos because when you inhale it and I think 10% of the budget on

nano science is now being spent on the health implications of nano science

and I think this is very important to do, no question about it. And we have tosafeguard ourselves that whatever we do in the nano sphere does not have

detrimental health effects so I think this is money wisely spent. It could be a

lot more expensive afterwards but, more so, we want to make sure that we

wont have a negative health impact. On the other hand, this should not

keep us from pushing on with nanaoscience because we are saying theres

some negative impact. We should be studying this in a scientific way and


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understand what the health impact is. Probably we will find things that we

have to be very careful with and others that are really benign. I think its the

right attitude to study the health impacts at the same time as we study the

science.

Prof Strmer: Youre talking about the nanobots? Youre concerned that

carbon nano tubes will take over the world? Well, what youre doing is

youre asking the question. I cannot give you the answer. I mean I feel, I

feel that we are in terms of self assembly, the one that is guiding these

rumors. We are so much at the beginning that questions about runaway self

assembly are so much in the future. I believe we do not have a problem to

be very much concerned about at the moment. I think at some point, if what

I showed you in growing laptops on trees would ever come to fruition, I

mean before that wed certainly have to start worrying about not having real

trees anymore, only laptops. So, yes, but I think that it is far in the futureand, of course, it was only a loose picture. I do not want to grow laptops on

trees. I want to self assemble soft units. You have a concern and youre not

the only one but I think this is something that is far in the future and will be

decided not by us but, at the end of the day, by our children and, perhaps, by

our childrens children. But all this world is about what we want to get out

if it and that is further down the line. The decision in this context will be

made by other generations but I think thats no concern of ours.

Speaker: Im afraid that I have to say

lecture nano

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