Nanotechnology’s First Fruits Products nearing market promise to lead the budding industry from hype to reality
Nanotechnology’s First Fruits Products nearing market promise to lead the budding industry from hype to reality
Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate
Thursday, June 6, 2002
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/06/nanotch.DTL
When most people think about nanotechnology, they usually conjure images of microscopically tiny contraptions such as the invisibly small submarine that was injected into a character’s bloodstream in the classic 1966 sci-fi movie “Fantastic Voyage.”
Nanovehicles and the revolution they would create in science, medicine, military affairs, and manufacturing are still on the distant horizon.
But the budding nanotech industry is making important progress in several other seemingly prosaic but nonetheless useful areas, such as perfecting new cosmetics, smaller batteries, better lightbulbs and more effective pharmaceuticals. The first of these products are expected to hit the market over the next few years.
Experts say this is a crucial stage for nanotechnology, which is beginning to move beyond its early hype toward the practical, technical stepping-stones and advanced manufacturing processes that will eventually lead to the most dramatic changes in the way humans live since our ancestors first switched on the lights.
That was the message at last month’s Nanotech Planet conference and expo in San Jose, which brought together several hundred working nanotechnologists and venture capitalists. Predictably, the conference agenda included some pretty far-out futuristic notions, such as manufacturing facilities that construct themselves and “Star Trek”-like molecular replicators capable of building food and other items one atom at a time. But novelties aside, most of the attention at the conference centered on more practical matters, such as the recent remarkable progress in bringing first-generation nanotechnology products to market and the additional opportunities that could be created once companies learn how to make them.
The accelerating growth curve is expected to lead roughly 300 nanotech companies to go public over the next 10 years, according to an estimate by Neil Weintraut, founder of 21st Century Venture Partners in Palo Alto.
One of the first nanotech-related breakthroughs consumers will see, for example, is a new type of sunscreen — expected to start showing up on store shelves within the next year or so — being perfected by a German company that was discussed, but not named, at the conference.
The sunscreen’s manufacturer (represented by one of its lead investors) says the company has mastered the task of making reliably miniscule particles of a substance that can block out the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. The benefits of this invention for sun worshipers would be substantial. According to data provided by the company, nano-size sun-blocking chemicals do a much better job of blocking the sun’s rays because they cover the skin more uniformly at a microscopic level and aren’t dislodged as easily. Current sunscreens, by contrast, can leave many nanometer-size areas of the skin unprotected. Add all those small, unprotected areas together and you can get a pretty nasty sunburn, no matter how much of the goop you’ve applied. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, the width of about 10 atoms lined up shoulder-to-shoulder. The head of a pin, by comparison, is about one million nanometers in diameter).
The same “small is beautiful” principle applies to a new generation of nanotech hair dyes, which are designed to make visits to the beauty parlor less frequent. When the coloring chemicals, known as pigment, are tinier, they likewise cover surfaces — in this case hair — more evenly. The results are dyes that should eventually last at least twice as long as those now sold.
“We need to see a technology that can lead to real products,” explained Zwi Vromen, whose Israel-based Millennium Materials Fund has made 19 nanotechnology investments to date.
The early interest in cosmetics, says Vromen, reflects a desire among many sophisticated investors to avoid lengthy entanglements in research and development that may go nowhere. Instead, he says, new and more exciting products can and will be built on the foundations created by earlier, more simple products such as sunscreen and hair dye.
“What we’re seeing are companies developing tools first, materials second and then full nano systems,” Charles Ostman, senior fellow at the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures, told those assembled at the conference.
One of the most compelling examples of such materials, which can also be considered a new type of tool, is a new breed of thin-film lithium-ion batteries being developed by firms such as Elk River, Minnesota-based Cymbet Corp. Once again, the ability to make particles — in this case, electricity-storing substances — very small promises a huge payoff. Because these novel batteries are nanotech based, they can absorb and discharge more electricity more frequently and with greater efficiency.
To get a handle on this idea, think, for example, about the relative efficiency of using one large sponge to sop up water versus that of employing thousands of mini-sponges. The water may never get to the center of the large sponge, the outer layer of which quickly becomes saturated. The smaller sponges, on the other hand, can soak up and discharge water more efficiently.
In the case of batteries, this approach translates into a thin, flexible film that can be recharged up to an astonishing 60,000 times. Literally thousands of potential applications exist for these new, more versatile nanotech-based batteries. The most exciting: plans already under way at Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc. to use the batteries to power new implantable medical devices, such as pacemakers and perhaps (this remains highly speculative) even small insulin pumps for diabetics. What makes the batteries even more remarkable, according to an investor in the company that developed them, is that they can be recharged by radio waves that pass harmlessly through body tissues.
This means that when a patient’s pacemaker (or any other implantable device) is running low on juice, all the person will need to do is stand near a recharging device for a little while, instead of undergoing a surgical procedure to replace the battery. The new batteries promise to take advanced bionics out of the realm of science fiction and put it more squarely in the middle of everyday medical practice. The first nano-batteries, which are also under development at several other firms, are expected to be commercially available before the end of this year.
Another dramatic announcement came from Southern California’s American Pharmaceutical Partners Inc., which recently found a way to make smaller particles of Taxol, a drug derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree that is used to treat and prevent recurrences of breast cancer. It turns out that shrinking the drug down to nano sizes (called nano-particles) allows much more of the drug’s active ingredient to be taken up by the affected body tissues, which, in turn, roughly doubled the response rate in one test of breast-cancer patients.
Even better, the nanotech process eliminated the use of a toxic chemical called cremophor in manufacturing Taxol doses, which also boosts the drug’s safety and effectiveness. Formal introduction of this new type of Taxol awaits additional testing and certification by the FDA. But the basic idea, making drugs smaller so targeted tissues in the body more readily absorb them, appears to have thousands of other potentially life-saving applications.
Other illuminating news at the conference centered on a newly developed type of nanocrystal called a nanophosphor that could help substantially alleviate the energy crisis. Several companies, most notably Nanocrystal Imaging Corp., headquartered in Briarcliff Manor, New York, say they are close to perfecting or have already perfected the ability to confine individual atoms inside tiny nanocrystals. One result is a very energy-efficient phosphor (a material that emits visible light). The development could signal a breakthrough in lighting technology, which has changed very little since the days of Thomas Edison. The most common tungsten-filament bulbs still use only about 5 percent of the electricity they consume to produce light, with the rest wasted as heat. Nanophosphors, on the other hand, convert electricity into light with an efficiency approaching 100 percent, making them roughly 20 times more efficient.
Worldwide, the energy savings would be enormous. Practical nanophosphors would also presumably reduce the demand for the generation of electricity, including from fossil fuel-powered plants that contribute to pollution and global warming. Outside the United States, for example, between 60 and 80 percent of all electricity is used to power lightbulbs, according to a recent Nanotech Planet report. In the U.S., keeping the lights on accounts for roughly 25 percent of the average household’s energy consumption.
“In 10 years’ time, we are absolutely positive we could replace incandescent and florescent lights,” Rajan Pillai, one of the firm’s founders, said in an interview between sessions at the conference. “Taking that one step would make us much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.” Pillai added that his firm is in negotiations with several leading players in the $3.2 billion-a-year lighting market.
Other existing industries that might be reshaped by nano-improvements over the next few years include everything from air conditioning and refrigeration (using 2 percent of current power levels) to better radiology dyes (capable of generating more precise, detailed images of internal structures). There’s also hope that more practical and cost-efficient nano-absorbers might be ready in time for the next big oil spill.
In the meantime, though, it looks like the cutting edge of this revolution in chemistry and manufacturing will be found in the same place it has often been found since before the biblical era.
The cosmetics counter.
