Nanotech's fascinating future

This week's highlighted research:

Lux Research. "Sizing nanotechnology's value chain."

NanoMarkets LC. "The Impact of Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery: Global Developments, Market Analysis and Future Prospects."

Forrester Research. "Report on technology invention: 2005".

Nanotechnology is a curious concept, and one that few people truly understand. Fortunately, we don't really have to understand it to gain benefit from it. Simply put, it's the science, or perhaps the art, of creating circuits and other devices from single atoms or molecules. I wonder if I could get a government grant to create a tiny, molecular work of public art that would be invisible to the naked eye? Probably, but that's a rant for another venue.

Nanotech is more than just a theoretical lab experiment. It's big, and it has practical applications. We'll be seeing a lot more of it in years to come. As Lux Research points out in its report though, nanotechnology in and of itself is, like the nanotech devices themselves, somewhat invisible. It's a behind-the-scenes technology, and you usually won't even know it's there. Rather than being an industry or sector unto itself, nanotechnology is really just a set of tools that can be used to improve on the manufacturing process of just about any product. General Motors uses nanotechnology in the manufacture of the new Chevrolet Impala. There's one in the driveway across the street from my house. I keep expecting my neighbor to press a button and make it invisible, but it doesn't work that way. He can't even fly it at supersonic speeds. There's really nothing obvious about it that says "nanotechnology." But behind the scenes, presumably General Motors has improved on their manufacturing processes using nanotechnology, which will ultimately save money, benefit their stockholders, and perhaps even make better automobiles, even if they don't have an invisibility option.

Lux predicts that the sales of the nanotechnology building blocks themselves, which take the form of carbon nanotubes and quantum dots, will only hit about $13 billion in 2014. But, the benefit will far exceed that $13 billion. Sales of products that incorporate nanotechnology will go from about 0.1 percent of global manufacturing output today, to 15 percent in 2014--about $2.6 trillion. Although at the present time, nanotech is being incorporated into the manufacture of more high-end goods, Lux Research predicts that as early as 2010, it will be used in a broader range of manufacturing processes, and will ultimately change the very nature of manufacturing across all segments.

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