blog

Sorry for the delay, I’ve been at a conference in California for the last week (more on that soon) and writing a pile of manuscripts.

A good friend forwarded me an article in the New York Times on “Tiny Is Beautiful: Translating ‘Nano’ Into Practical.”

Of course I have some nits to pick… For one, I’m not sure where “rampaging nanorobots” comes in, except as a writing tool to suggest some of the possibilities of nano research. And while I love the reference to the art of nanoparticles in stained glass windows, I totally disagree with Prof. Mirkin’s comments that “everything, regardless of what it is, has new properties.” Right now, I think that’s one of the great questions in nanoscience. Certainly many metals show size-dependent properties on the nanoscale. And many inorganic chemicals do as well. Yet I think it’s unclear if organic materials really do have “new properties” on the nanometer scale.

The article also ends with a claim that nanoparticles will form the basis of nanoscale electronic devices. I don’t think so–unless you decide that any collection of multiple atoms or molecules on the scale of 1-100nm is a “nanoparticle.” I think there are quite a few possible ways to make good molecular electronics and nanocircuits beyond stringing together spherical particles. Then again, that’s what I’m doing now for research, so I might be biased. But you can certainly make much smaller wires and electrical switches than most stable nanoparticles.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a pretty good article that covers some not-quite-mundane research right now.