Carbon Nanomaterials and Obama’s Vision of Risk-takers, the Doers, and the Makers of Things

by Garry Golden on March 23, 2010

A lot can happen in 10 years when looking at the launch phase of new industries!  In 1990, the ‘information superhighway‘ was an abstraction not fully understood by the public.  Most people did not care about computers- or demand products or services that would help them connect or be social on this digital highway. And few incumbent business leaders took its disruptive potential seriously.

By 2000 the Internet was the default platform for entrepreneurship and innovation even though the ‘web’ was still in its infancy.   Some ideas were too early and over-hyped, while others were tremendously profitable.  The industry did not mature in a decade, but it was launched as a real world platform that continues to change society and business.

Could 2010-2020 be the same type of ‘launch’ decade for nanotechnology?

If we want the answer to be yes then we must postpone futuristic visions of nano-robots swimming around our bloodstream, and focus on leveraging phase one nanomaterials that include: nanotubes, nanoparticles and nanosheets (graphene).

Instead of trying to sell visions of molecular assembly factories, we should focus on nanomaterials that can  be integrated into existing manufacturing techniques.

What Nano needs is a decade of incremental innovations and a massive PR campaign!

And if there is one element to highlight and demystify –  it is carbon!

A ‘Designer+Maker’ Vision for Launching Nano
In 2020, the measures of success and prosperity should not be the number of nano enhanced products, but the momentum created by entrepreneurs and leaders acting upon new visions of industrial sectors including energy, electronics and appliances, healthcare, transportation, textiles, infrastructure and consumer products.

The hope is a new generation of Craftsman and Industrialists reinventing the value chain of the material world as product and systems designers and low volume manufacturers of  low cost, high performance materials.

Here within the US this potential launch decade for nano-materials might help to accelerate momentum around the vision long held by ‘DIY’ / Maker culture and captured in President Obama’s inaugural speech … in which greatness and prosperity are delivered by: “…the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.”

This message has been adapted for talks on education and ‘teaching young people how to be makers of things, not just consumers of things‘.  This ‘maker’ vision is also reflected by industrial business leaders wishing to expand US high value manufacturing exports.

There is, of course, a  cultural challenge associated with this ‘designer-maker‘ case for nanotechnology. For half a century, the US economy has been driven by consumer spending and policies that favor outsourcing manufacturing abroad.   It was great while it lasted.  And now all economists agree that growth in global consumer spending will happen outside of the US!  Yet, moving forward a strong case can be made for economic restructuring  based on the US designing and building for/with the rest of the world.

These are still very early days… but 2010-2020 might be an important decade for selling this designer-builder vision. 

21st Century Craftsman & Industrialists
Why Shape Matters: Nanotubes, Nanoparticles & Nanosheets
Nanotechnology is a scale, not a thing.  At the nanoscale, familiar and well understood elements on the periodic table begin to exhibit very unique properties (e.g. electrical, mechanical, thermal, et al) because we have changed their basic shape and structure.

When you change the shape and structure of your foundation material, other molecules (and light/electrons) react and interact differently when they encounter it.  (e.g. nano vs micro particles of silver exhibit different properties)  This could be applied to materials used in computer chips, water desalination membranes, fuel cells, batteries, pharmaceuticals, or plastics.  There is no industry or product left untouched by nanoscale material design.

Shape matters.  And the nano age is opening up a new world of shapes for us to explore.

Beyond shapes the element that is most important to this first phase of nanotechnology is carbon.  And the formats that matter most include:

  • Carbon nanotubes (single/multi-walled)
  • Carbon-based nanoparticles that incorporate other elements (e.g. nickel, iron, silver, platinum, et al)
  • Carbon graphene sheets (thin layers of carbon)

These three forms of carbon are likely to give rise to new industrial concepts capable of altering our assumptions of what is possible in materials world via:  organic electronics (e.g. carbon based electronics), nanocomposites, nanostructured catalaysts, MEMS (micro electromechanical systems), and nano sensor arrays

Whether or not we are entering a  ’launch decade’ for nanomaterials might be based on two fundamental shifts in the sector:

2010-2020 From Synthesis to Functionalization
& From Boomers to Gen X & Millennial Generation Researchers

The next decade will likely be shaped by two major shifts – the first is our expanding knowledge base and applied engineering prowess from an age of characterization (learning what things do; nature of nano) and ‘synthesis‘ (how to make them) to an era of ‘functionalization‘ (actually integrating them into manufacturing and applied processes).

In other words, the past twenty years have been focused on learning to make (synthesis) nanotubes, nanoparticles and nanosheets (graphene) – and the next decade will be focused on producing these elements on scale and integrated into other materials and manufacturing techniques. The focus is bringing nanotechnology out of labs and into production facilities and real world markets.

The other major shift relates to the people who serve as researchers, entrepreneurs, regulators, and consumers. It has been Baby Boomers leading the charge since the early 1990s when nanoscale research began in earnest. This generation gave shape to the first knowledge base of nanostructured materials that seemed to contradict many previously assumed principles of molecular interactions.

This Boomer generation has also been cultivating the next generation of researchers who arrive in labs with a more solid collective knowledge base of nanostructured materials and fewer assumptions about what isn’t possible.  These ‘Gen X‘ and Millennial generation researchers might bring a very different spirit to nano era that is more entrepreneurial and applied.

These two transitions will also need a greater context to have any meaning to leaders and citizens of the world.  And that context might have less to do with technology, and everything to do with demographics, economics and industrial capacity and ecological sustainability based on micro-scale applications of natural resources.

Nanoscale science and engineering allows us to rethink how we use key elements like iron ore, hydrocarbon, precious metals and carbon.   And in the most optimistic scenario might lead to a new industrial revolution that is more sustainable and profitable than today’s current material manufacturing model.

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A brief interlude on the science and recent research:

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs)

CNTs are versatile cylindrical materials that have a wide range of performance properties:

  • mechanical properties as reinforcement in low-cost, high performance lightweight composites
  • electrical properties for semiconductor applications
  • sensing abilities for imaging and gas molecule detection
  • chemical properties to process chemical fuels (e.g. synthetic fuels, hydrogen, biofuels)
  • thermal properties for absorbing heath; transforming heat to electricity

[Safety is of course a top priority - but not an issue I will cover in this post!  I will only note that federal regulators have been working with researchers and manufacturers in assessing risks and impacts of CNT nanocomposites are automotive industry, aviation/aerospace, electronics-telecommunications, medicine, and recreational goods industries.]

What matters is real world production levels!   We are in year one of real commercial scale volume by early industry leaders such as Bayer MaterialScience,  Thomas-Swan and Unidym.   By the end of the decade we would expect incumbents in today’s petrochemical and materials manufacturing to be competing in this space!

And while we should be monitoring commericalization efforts, foresight commands us to understand the pipeline and roadmap beyond 2010.

Recent notable breakthroughs include:

So much for ‘nanotubes’! And forgive me for skipping carbon support structures used in nanoparticles!  This post is already too long!

Graphene
The other major platform for carbon nanomaterial is a thin sheet known as graphene.   Graphene, which is different from graphite in pencils, is a one layer thick sheet of carbon. While CNTs were first isolated and synthesized in the 1990s, graphene research is less than a decade old.

Graphene is on record as the highest surface area material and strongest known material yet synthesized, but most researchers cherish graphene for their electrical properties allow electrons to speed along faster than silicon-based transistors (and also absorb heat!).

Graphene is a likely candidate for high performance alternatives to silicon and precious metal based electronics. And based on the rate of progress and easier obstacles compared to CNTs (e.g. chirality of metal vs insulator versions of CNTs) and shape, I am more confident in graphene applications as the disruptive force for near term carbon nanomaterial applciations.

Recent highlights:

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A Roadmap for 2010 – 2020

So how do we work towards making this next decade the launch decade for carbon nanomaterials?

First, we need to put aside the excessive hype and uninformed skepticism –  and be practical!

We do not need to over hype nanotechnology to have a serious conversation about its potential to change the physical and digital foundations of our major industrial sectors.

And we do not need to pooh-pooh – or roll our eyes – when we hear about nanotechnology’s first phase of development focused on additives, coatings and simple nanocomposites.

Nobody expects the commercialization of the most fantastical concepts (e.g. nano robots floating through your blood stream), we should focus on Phase One nanoscale engineering based on ‘tubes’, ‘particles’ and ’sheets’.

The most practical way forwards is to focus on integrating nanomaterials into existing manufacturing techniques (rather than introduce novel nano-production systems).

Second, we need to engage the next generation of business entrepreneurs and leaders in pushing forward the mainstream campaigns for discussing the benefits and risks associated with nanomaterials.

And in this public awareness process we must recognize the limitations of having effective public or political conversations regarding carbon nanomaterials. It is a subject far off the radar of most people in the world, and it is not feasible to make any sound forecasts of what might happen by tapping current day opinions.

Most people are unlikely to see carbon as a source of great wealth creation and the foundation for new industries, anymore than people in 1950s could look at sand (silica dioxide)  and see it as the pillar material for the telecommunications revolution that occurred in the second half of the 20th century.

So we will need leaders to explain the vision, and framers and curators to explain our progress.

And if we are lucky, a successful business person who makes a lot of money on a breakthrough nanoproduct can’t hurt the image of the industry!

We need to close the knowledge and perception gap of what nanotechnology is… and isn’t.  And then we might be in a position to have an informed public debate on how much we should invest, and when.

For now, I hope that researchers continue to build bridges to the entrepreneurial community around the three foundations of carbon nanomaterials: nanotubes, nanoparticles and nanosheets (graphene)

Want to learn more…?   A few resources below..

Following Carbon on Twitter;

My delicious bookmarks on carbon:

Interesting sites:


Companies

Carbon’s industrial formats including pure carbon, carbon+oxygen, carbon+hydrogen:

Stanford Nanoelectronics Group presents “Nanotechnology – Carbon Nanotube Electronics”

Carbon Nanotube flexible speaker

Fujitsu Laboratories New Carbon Nanotube Composite : DigInfo

Intel Science Talent Search 2009 – Philip Streich

From: Giant-Stroke, Superelastic
Carbon Nanotube Aerogel Muscles. Science, Vol. 323 Issue 5921, March 19, 2009.

Past, Present & Future of Craftsman & Industrialists
If we look to the past, we can see various stages of civilization that have been shaped by builders of things.

The first creators of things used natural materials (dirt/clay, wood, stone),  before turning to heat and reactive additives to transform ores into metals/alloys (copper/bronze/steel).  In the 20th century we turned to modern chemistry and hydrocarbon resources to synthesize polymers/composites (plastics), and then new tools for layering/etching patterns to develop micro-structured semiconductor materials (silicon, et al).

The materials technology view of social change is not the only lens or explanation of the past, present or future, but it seems to hold particular significance as we look to a near term future shaped by nanoscale materials design andbio-industrial processes.

Image credit: http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/graphene08/ by Jannik Meyer

Tagged as: business, carbon, energy, globalization, industry, manufacturing, nanotechnology, policy, US, work

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Peter Verkooijen March 23, 2010 at 3:49 pm

Obama’s vision is to tax and regulate risk-takers, doers, makers of things out of existence and have the government run everything. His words are empty demagoguery.

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