Mystery and possibility in the tiny world of nanotechnology
Paul Burrows
Scientists in the classic sci-fi movie, "Fantastic Voyage," were miniaturized and traveled through the bloodstream to destroy a life-threatening blood clot in a human's brain. Miniaturizing humans is likely to remain the stuff of science fiction, but using tiny molecules to prevent blood clots in humans and eat away cholesterol deposits is a real possibility. So believes Paul Burrows of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"Nanoscience and nanotechnology bring a new dimension to advancing medicine, solving environmental problems, and reaching new heights in technical achievements," said Burrows, manager of PNNL's Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Initiative.
Burrows, as part of the Community Science and Technology Seminar Series on December 5, discussed the world of the very small and described a few of the many possibilities of this revolutionary science. His presentation, "Big Possibilities from Tiny Technologies," was held at the Columbia Basin Advanced Technology Center on the Columbia Basin College campus in Pasco. The seminar series is sponsored by PNNL and CBC.
Burrows is an internationally recognized expert in the science and technology of organic semiconductors, a type of material that potentially can transform the world of electronic circuit and video display technology. He is fascinated with what may be the ultimate in electronic miniaturization--functional circuits based on single molecules. This interest has broadened into the study of a wide range of organic thin film and bulk materials for optoelectronic applications.
"Nanotechnology is the first major change in manufacturing philosophy since the Stone Age," Burrows said. For more than two million years, according to Burrows, the idea in manufacturing has been to take lumps of a material and whittle them down to build the desired material. While the tools have changed from granite axes to silicon microchips, top down manufacturing still dominates. "Nanotechnology turns that view upside down," he said. "Nanotechnology is designing at the molecular level and building these molecules into useful tools from the bottom up.
"The ability to precisely combine and manipulate single atoms and molecules presents tremendous opportunities to address a wide range of society's critical challenges," Burrows said.
Researchers at PNNL are helping pave the way for this revolution. "We are contributing scientific and technical resources to the nation's knowledge and understanding of the phenomena that occur at the nanoscale," Burrows said. "For example, we're growing nanoscale magnetic semiconducting oxides that could be used in future generation computing systems."
Researchers also are studying materials on the nanoscale to see how they can be manipulated and how they might be useful. In the area of biologic applications, studies are being conducted to understand the properties of individual biomolecules and their function in living cells. And using leading edge equipment at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, scientists and engineers are designing, creating and testing nanoscale systems.
Dr. Burrows graduated from Queen Mary College, University of London, UK, with a doctorate in physics. He was a research scholar at Princeton from 1995 to 2000, at which time he joined PNNL. He previously held research positions at the University of Southern California and the Riken Institute for Physical and Chemical Research in Saitama, Japan.
