Small Wonders The World of Nanoscience Dr Horst Strmer Lecture Czech Technical University 10/19/2006 Horst Strmer: Good

d morning everybody, its a great pleasure to be here at the Czech Technical University. Actually, its also a great pleasure to be in a country where they know what an umlaut is and you have all these little hyphens and bars on top of your letters and you know that the Germans have too. And when I was born and I had two dots in my name and it disappeared in the United States because Americans do not know how to handle umlauts. So, a colleague of mine told me, Just drop them, they do not know how to do it. So, for twenty three years of my life that I lived in the United States, I didnt have an umlaut and then we won the Nobel Prize and the Germans came back and said, You do not have an umlaut? and I had to admit that I had an umlaut so, ever since, I have had three times, once without an umlaut, once with an oe and once with an umlaut which cut my publication record by a factor of three! So its good to be in a country where you understand all of these things that are on the top or the bottom of letters. Im really very pleased to be here. In fact, I was thinking about this as a technical University and thats particularly why I appreciated it because, although all of my education and training is in the sciences, I think deep down Im really an engineer. In fact, Id probably be a much better engineer than a physicist! So, Im looking so much forward to the things that were going to see tomorrow. I think, maybe, already Sunday afternoon and Im sure that Im going to enjoy it very much. I said Im pleased to be here and Im pleased to be here in spite of the schedule which means that I have to give four hours of lectures. Ive done this only once before in my life and, in fact, to disastrous results but, at the end of the day, over dinner, I couldnt remember any more at what University I was. Im sure this will not happen here because this is, of course, going to be a very solid event and I will have all of these impressions that will not let me forget this University Im sure.

What I would like to talk to you about, Im giving two lectures and I said already Ill give you four hours of lectures and I hope, at the end of the day, you will not be tired of me so this is a public lecture and, in the afternoon, therell be a second lecture which will be a little bit more specialized but dont be concerned about it. It still is a colloquial so I invite you all to join. Its a bit more technical and much more to what I mostly actually do in terms of research. This public lecture is very much along the line of what Im doing with many colleagues at Columbia and I want to give you a sort of broad overview of what nanoscience is and I think where its going and why its so interesting. In fact, at Columbia, we have a Nanoscience Centre which is funded by the National Science Foundation. Its one of the first six that was funded. We are about sixty people: about twenty faculty; about twenty students; about twenty post grads. We particularly focus on the electronic properties on the nanoscale so the talk that I am giving you today is a public lecture. Its meant for a very broad audience and it tries to point out where I think, presently, the interesting aspects of nanoscience are and, more so, where things are going in the long run. So youve probably all heard about nano. Certainly around the university its not a word that hasnt been heard before but nano really came on the stage, I would say, just about ten years ago as something that was recognized by a broader, I should say, the broader public to a degree which we all know nowadays, well I suppose most students know what nano is ever since this little gadget came on the market which is the IPOD Nano and, although this is not really on the nano scale, it certainly is along the line of what nano means in the meaning of the word its the new word for dwarf, its something small. Not everything that is nano is really on the nano scale because, of course, inside there are things that are not nano. Some of the things that you see in a nano are not that serious. Here is something called a Nano reef which is really just a very small aquarium with very small fish in it. So the word nano is being used in many senses and not always along the line of what nano actually means. And, as we all know, nano really means just one billionth so, one nanosecond is one billionth of a second, a nanogram one billionth of a gram and a nanobrain would be a very big insult! So, nano really means just one billionth and one billionth in the sense of a meter and, although, as this audience is well aware what a nanometer is, I

mean we should still put it on a scale. If you have one billionth of a meter, it also means one millionth of a millimeter and one thousandth of a micrometer. So, one nano is really just about what you can see on a microscope because what you can see on a microscope is roughly, sort of a micron. All the way down to the atomic scale but not quite to the atomic scale. Its really above the atomic scale. A nanometer is about five to ten atoms in a row and its actually a very important aspect. The nano scale and the atomic scale is not the same scale. The nano scale is above the atomic scale because it doesnt deal with individual atoms but it deals with an assembly of atoms and that is what is the important aspect of it. When you take an iron atom while it is in steel or you take an iron atom which is the same iron atom and you look at it while its in hemoglobin, it is very very different. It has a very different function in hemoglobin than it does in steel and what makes the difference is, its not the atomic scale but slightly above the atomic scale and the environment matters. Its the first time that things can be put together and make something of interest to us, so let me bring to you a movie that you have seen before and I want to put this into a little bit of context of the length scales that were familiar with. Ive shown you a movie. This is a movie pack of ten so every slide shows you another pack of ten starting approximately at the scale of the universe we are working one thousand times smaller than the scale of the universe. I just want to put the nanoscale in perspective of all of these length scales that we are dealing with. So as were going down orders and orders of magnitude, the whole thing always looks the same, just on different scales, and eventually at about ten to the nine meters, we come up with something that were familiar with, the Earth. And thats on the scale of about a hundred thousand kilometers and as we go further down, were diving actually into Florida. This is a magnet lab into Florida where were working quite often, a leaf and down into beginning at a micrometer, one micrometer. So, this is the nanoscale: a hundred nanometers, ten nanometers, one nanometer, and were diving into an atom, into the nucleus and into the core and then we get into the nth scale but we really dont know whats going on once we get to the nth scale. So, on this length scale, from the size of the universe all the way down to the sub-atomic scale, typically as a physicist, all of these length scales have their particular attractions. And here we try and understand how the universe came about, what dark matter is, what dark energy is nowadays. Down at the other end of the length scale we find understand what mass is, how mass

comes about how elementary particles come about and even much further down, almost mathematics on somewhere string theory. Again, trying to understand what happens on this length scale and the nanoscale sits somewhere right smack in the middle. So, what is so interesting about the nanoscale? To put it in one word, its complexity. Its for the first time where you can put atoms together to make some things which are called interesting, call it complex and we will come back to this, but before doing this, let me actually agree the nanoscale with this audience here or to this lecture hall. So, let me just get a feel for how small the nanoscale is. So, let me do something that I should do less and less often at my age and my hair color which is pull out a hair. Ive found one! And we look at this hair which, at least at my age, is about the smallest thing that you can see! I got two. I shouldnt do this! This bodes poorly for my future. So, you pull out a hair. This is about the smallest thing that you can see. Now imagine that we blow up this hair to the size that you can touch the atoms which would make the atoms as big as, well usually I would make the atoms as big as basketballs, but, because were in Europe, well make them as big as soccer balls which here is called football Im sure. Thats at least the way we call it in Germany too. Football. So, we make it as big as a football. So, this hair we now place on top of a CPU, just lying on top of CPU. Now guess how big this hair is. Now guess how big this hair is. Now, sure, you can all calculate it I know but just have a quick guess. How big is the hair? This hair is now lying on us. Im standing under here. The hair is lying on the University and covering Prague. How big is the hair if the atoms are as big as soccer balls? Well, heres a map of Prague and this is how big a hair would be if we blew up all the atoms to the size of soccer balls. No sun from Vichy to Melnik No sun over Prague and thats only in this direction. And thats all soccer balls and everything blocked out. So, this is as big as just one hair would be if you had the atoms as big as soccer balls. Now, on that scale, if the atoms are as big as soccer balls, the nanoscale is about the size of this auditorium or about the size of this stage. So, this is the scale on which one is operating when one is dealing with the nanoscale. And were very comfortably operating nowadays on the nanoscale already.

So, let me point out to you a little bit the challenges but also the opportunities that exist on the nanoscale. So lets start out with an atom and, of course, this is a very poor rendering of an atom Heres an atom and I recall very distinctively in the early eighties having been on a committee with Physics Today which is a publication of the American Institute of Physics and having across from me sitting John Hopdales who is a physicist but then also a biologist but he said at some point, But atoms, atoms are boring! and I was shocked because, as a physicist, I mean the atom is the demonstration of quantum mechanics. We can measure everything, we can nowadays calculate most of the things. But he said, But atoms are boring and, in a certain sense, hes right because an atom is basically like a Lego block and, just like an individual Lego block, it is not that interesting. This is actually the son of a colleague Colin Marples whos a chemist demonstrating to you how interesting a single Lego block is. Lego blocks by themselves are not interesting. Whats interesting is what can be made out of them and I do not want to say that atoms are boring but certainly what comes to be interesting is what you can make of them and that doesnt happen on the scale of the individual atom but it happens at a bigger scale so if the individual atom is boring or not that interesting then let me show you something thats interesting. This is only atoms and yet something comes out of it that you somehow wouldnt be able to see in the atom. You can calculate the atom until the cows come home but we would not imply the existence of something like that. Let me show you something else whose existence we wouldnt imply form the orbit of an atom and this is probably the most complex system in the galaxy. I wouldnt go as far as saying the universe, maybe theres Klingons out there! I dont know in addition to this so this is all made out of atoms and you will say, Well, this is one hell of a lot of atoms so, sure, all hell can break loose but, just look at this. This is a lot smaller and its all made out of atoms and yet it has a lot of what the elephant is and the brain is and certainly biology, go still smaller is a single cell organism. We still have a lot of the characteristics of the elephant, the brain and its all made out of atoms. We go still smaller and we get to a virus. Notice, were now on the nanoscale of about a hundred nanometers and here is a virus and here we cannot discuss this is the borderline between living and non-living matter. Is it a life or is it just a very complex replicator? This is certainly happening on the nanoscale. So you say, Well, sure, its biology, its complex and we

know how complex it is. There is some quality that arises there that we dont recognize in the atom and yet all of this is a combination of atoms, a conglomeration of atoms put together in a complex way and then generating mini matter but I would venture to say this is not just true form biology. Look at this. Youll recognize this. Theres a lot of steel in there. And the properties of steel are not determined on the scale of maybe a little atom but they are determined on the nanoscale. You have to put a few atoms together to make steel. The properties of this steel, whether its rust resistant, flexibility, its strength, all this is determined on the nanoscale, not the atomic scale, but already on the nanoscale. Or look at this here, here is wood. Of course, this is dead matter but the stability of wood, its resistance too, how it weathers, all of this, is determined on the nanoscale, not on the atomic scale. Here is something else, ceramics. If you look at ceramics, the crack resistance, its strength, its flexibility, determined on the nanoscale, not on the atomic scale. But it is the nanoscale that decides these material properties. So, macroscopic material properties, whatever you look at - glass brick, T-shirts, bicycle grease, whatever - is determined on the nanoscale. It is the first time we can put atoms together to make something called interesting, something complex which eventually determines the material properties on the very large scale. Then, we say, Okay, fine, but this is very different from biology. Biology is self assembled and this, well this is self assembled too. Were not taking atoms and taking them under the microscope and putting atoms together and making a brick out of it we just take so self assembled. So, in this sense, its not that dissimilar and the first time you can get something interesting, some complex material property or some complex behavior is when you go up to the nanoscale and its actually very much along the line of what a colleague of mine, Philip Anderson, once said, Moore is different, Moore is not just the sum of the parts but its different. Theres other, theres emerging properties coming out. There is something happening there that we do not know how to describe yet. We may not be able to describe it. It may just be one rule after another. There may not just be some brilliant law thats still to be uncovered. It may just be one rule after another. But, coming back to this aspect, all this is self assembled and its happening on the nanoscale.

The nanoscale is also the scale where the discipline is nowadays and Ill give an example from my metaphysics background. In the end of the last century, sorry, game over. In the last century, before the last century, so in the nineteenth century, we knew how to describe the single crystals and, at the turn of the century, we were able to get X-ray pictures out of it and nowadays we can actually move atoms around so this is a nanoscale at two nanometers across so we are working on the nanoscale. In material science, we know how to make silicon crystals, cut them into pieces do basic lithography and working this out technologically on the nanoscale. The chemists have gone somewhat the other way. The chemists have started out with relatively simple molecules and they build up to more complex molecules and, nowadays, are looking at how to assemble these complex molecules into bigger entities. And heres, for example, something that theyre working on and heres something called the nano mushroom where you take molecules and you do a few (unintelligible) but youll get either or hydrogen bonds to make up entities that are on a bigger scale than the individual molecule and that is on the nanoscale. And biology, too, came up from species down to single cell organisms and, nowadays, ascribes the properties and function of individual molecules and all of this happens at the nanoscale. The disciplines are talking to each other. The disciplines are learning each others language which is often the most difficult part. Its not only in the real world that language is a very strong boundary but also in the sciences. We learn that similar kinds of mathematical methods can be used in the different sciences and the boundaries between these sciences is actually the most fertile ground for progress so the disciplinarity in our science is almost anonymous and the interaction between chemistry and physics is one thats very strong and were now building up interaction with biology which for the last five years we havent done yet but there is very fertile ground. So, if you talk about the nanoscale, you can come from different angles. You can come from material science, biology, or from chemistry, or from physics. With my background in physics, let me give you my perspective on it. I believe that the reason that we are nowadays so comfortable on the nanoscale is actually this one. Im not sure whether youll recognize this. Does anybody recognize this? This is the first transistor. This is the first transistor as it was in 1947. Christmas Eve 1947. Christmas Eve 1947. These people were working on Christmas Eve! And the size of this is about

the size of an egg. Most of this is the holder. The actual bit is quite a bit smaller but the whole thing is about as big as an egg. So, this was in 1947 and here is what has happened since. This is the itanium two chip and this thing has 220 million transistors and all of them are working so, in roughly fifty, well sixty years, weve come from one transistor to 220 million. In fact all of this, no most of this, is actually on the nanoscale. I very much feel that this nanoscience nanotechnology is very much furthered by the development in the silicon industry and the progress is really enormous. This is a Moore plot which shows you the number of transistors on a chip from one thousand, ten thousand up to one billion from the 1970s to the year 2004. Oh, I extended it. This little thing doesnt exist yet at the moment but you can see what its about. Whats so impressive about this industry is that every eighteen months it increases the number of transistors on the chip by a factor of two. So it doubles every eighteen months and it has done this since the 1970s. Of course, this is not a physical law but it has become a rule in the industry and everybody is looking at this plot and tries to stay on it because if they dont do it then their competitor will. So, implicitly, it became a law. So this is the Moore plot. And, also, whats quite interesting is that every eighteen months were making more transistors than we have ever made before because a half plus a quarter plus an eighth. one plus a half plus a quarter plus an eighth . So its enormous work this industry has achieved and many of the features of these chips nowadays are only in the nanoscale. And that Ill come back to. But, before that, let me just point out once again how enormous the progress of this industry has been and heres a comparison. Where would our cars be if the progress in the car industry had been as fast as in the silicon industry? What Im showing you here is a 1948 two door sedan, a car that the inventor of the original transistor could have driven. It has four wheels, two headlights etc. If you see the same car in 2006, it has four wheels, it has two headlamps etc. If the progress in the car industry had been as rapid as in the silicon industry then the car would weigh four grammes, it would have a mileage of eighteen million miles to the gallon, it would have a speed of twenty one million miles per hour, the trunk would have 410 cubic feet but the most important part of this is that the cost would be only three dollars! But it just demonstrates how incredible the process in this industry has been.

So let me show you one of the, well, I shouldnt call it miracles but, in terms of self assembly, one of the aspects of the silicon industry, that they are growing now silicon crystals that are forty centimeters diameter, two meters long and what is so amazing about it, after all I find that weve all grown sugar crystals when we were kids but, nevertheless, in this crystal, this is one crystal which means that if I take an atom down here and I count 1.3 million over here and I count 13.3 billion up here and another 6.4 billion, its exact to an atom again. All of the atoms are exactly in the right place. I mean its just strengthened my argument, this is self assembled. Were not putting the atoms there. Mother Nature does this for us. This is almost a miracle. These single crystals are then being sliced into these wafers and then we make transistors out of them. And heres one of the transistors. I show you this for a very special reason. This is actually a picture that was taken, by now, almost ten years ago and very hard to switch off arent they? So heres a transistor. I show this for one particular reason. For one, as I say, this was ten years ago, the experimental stage nowadays. This is the transistor size that we have in the circuits and you see the length scale here, 60 nanometres so, so this is the gate, oops, this is the gate so electrons are coming in here, now passing by here and theyre going out there and you see theres a length scale here, 60 nanometres, so this is in the nanoscale. These transistors are nowadays on the nanoscale and what I found most impressive about this picture is that, on the same scale of which I see the whole device, I can see the individual atoms. You probably cannot because its a little bit bright in here. We can count the atoms from here to here as 382 so the scale on which you see the whole device, we see the individual atoms. So, we people, we engineers, particularly the engineers actually are very comfortable with dealing with the nanoscale nowadays. This is most of what theyre doing. There is another length scale in here that is the thickness of the silicon dioxide, a thin insulating layer which is blown up here with of four atoms thick. If you make it much thinner, then the electrons will actually quantum mechanically through so we have quantum mechanics in our pockets. So one cannot make them thinner than that so theres a limit here as why were not quite down on this next scale in manufacturing . Were making billions and billions of these on the nanoscale every day so the nanoscale is not something foreign to engineering.

Heres another one. This is, what I just showed you was in silicon, this is a layer system made out of Gallium Aresnide, Aluminum Gallium Arsenide which you really should look at thats just being two different semiconductor levels. There we go, theres semiconductor level one and semiconductor level two. The way this is being made is that they take a big vacuum vessel, a big vessel, pump all of the gas out so that you dont have oxygen and nitrogen anymore and then, then you load two ovens with semiconductor number one and semiconductor number two and you evaporate it onto a substrate which is a piece of semiconductor that you got by other means. You can buy this. So, theres a Gallium Arsenide substrate and you can evaporate semiconductor one or semiconductor two onto it and here are these little shutters, one thing on, one thing off etc, back and forth. In fact, when I came to Bell which is now, I was working at Bell for twenty five years so this was sometime in the seventies, this was still done by hand and what I find absolutely amazing is that, by hand, you can grow a single layer of semiconductor number one and then single layer of semiconductor number two. So, you just stand there, operate this shutter and in about one second you create one single atomic layer just by hand. So we already have our hands on the nanoscale. Weve had them on the nano scale for quite a while. But what the picture shows you is four layers, four layers of material number one and four layers of material number two and this is of course on the length scale of nanometers. What you can do with this and, as much as silicon plays an important role in electronics Gallium Arsenide or even Gallium Arsenide semiconductors play a role in, in the internet and photonics or data transmission along glass fibers and these layers I just showed you are essential for long distance transmission of light. So, what is generated on the nanoscale is essential for our operation of the internet. And heres a more complex one. This is Federico Capasso who has invented something called the QCL laser, the quantum cascade laser, but the layers that I showed you before are a little bit more complex and you create this computer simulation and this laser has beautiful radiation patterns and they are and will be more important in the future for sensing, remote sensing, of environmental impact gases for example. So here, too, the nanoscale is essential for the operation of the device. Now what I showed you is, these layered structures and their impact on photonics, the word for long distance communication via glass fibers. You can also use them for electronics, just like you make these very thin electro layers in a silicon mosfet, a silicon

transistor. You can also squeeze electrons between these white layers and keep them out of the black layers. This is something I wont go into. You can put a source and it rains, you can see the electrons coming in here and going out there with a gate on top. So here is a transistor made out of different materials and whats interesting about this one is the fastest and quietest through this little world. In fact, its quite possible that quite a few of you actually carry one of these little things in your pocket. This is called a HEM transistor, high electrode mobility transistor and its very often the first transistor in your cell phone because it, because its very quiet and very fast which is what you want for a cellular telephone and theyre very often also in, you see the receiving end of the antennas. So, again, the nanoscale plays an important role. So let me take these two dimensional systems and let me take this one stage further and do this in a very superficial way but just to bring home how comfortable we are, nowadays, operating on the nanoscale. Heres just an example. Taking these sheets that we make by layer by layer growth of different, of different semiconductors and you can break them up by evaporating electrodes on top of the two dimensions and you see this scale is a bar, a one micrometer bar and this is done with something called electron beam lithography and by putting electric bias on there, we can crate little puddles. So, there are two red puddles here, the red is painted in by me, where this is a puddle that contains just one electron and this is a puddle that contains one other electron and putting different voltages on, in fact, heres a drawing and you see one electron sitting here and one electron sitting there and the electrons have spin and, without going into the details of all of this, we are now not just able to do electron ESR, electron spin resonance, with individual electrons and we can operate with individual electrons and this is a precursor to which I will come back to later in the afternoon for quantum continuity. But we have become very comfortable with operating on individual electrons, not only on their charge but even on their spin. Let me show you another example, so this is really hands on quantum mechanics. Heres another way of taking this two dimensional system that we have created and making smaller entities out of it by growing, for example here, Indium Arsenide on top of Gallium Arsenide and these have slightly different lattice constants so the atoms are arranged in a slightly different way and, therefore, they grow these little hillocks. This is self assembled. This is not something were doing from top down. This is coming from the bottom up. It can create these little hillocks here so these

are little quantum dots. You see them here and, again, a little here. They create quantum dots on the nano scale and, in fact, this has been researched quite extensively. We are thinking this might be a better source for semiconductor lasers. Again, technology on the nano scale that is already being pursued. Here is quantum dots made by chemistry and Im not much of a chemist and, therefore, Im showing you that it is just being done in a typical chemistry way which is in glass test tubes which is different from what were using. Its actually a very cheap way of making quantum dots and these are dots that in this case have the diameter of eight nanometres, made out of semiconductor. I think this is (unintelligible) sulphide. You see the individual atoms, the picture is taken of the individual atoms and whats so fantastic about it, its just like your atom, you have the different weight functions, now you have the different weight functions in this sphere and the sphere acts like a mu atom, an atom contains electrons and the energy of these electrons will depend on their size. So if you make a very small one, then their energy is high and if you make a big ball then the energy is lower. What this leads to is, if you can make, if you just sort out the right quantum dot, in actuality if you make small quantum dots they look blue and big quantum dots, they look red. And, therefore, this property of what is the color of it, does not depend on what the material is but what the size is. Right? The material is always the same but by changing the size of the material we actually change the property. In this case its what is its color. So you ask what is this good for? There are companies out there who are already selling this. This, by the way, was invented by one of my colleagues Bruce who is now also at Colombia. The companies out there who are selling it, its being used in biology to encoat these materials, these quantum dots with antibodies so they go after a particular protein. You can take different sized quantum dots, coat them with different antibodies and the blue ones go to one protein, the green ones go to another protein and, therefore, if you are now sampling biological materials, different proteins will light up in a different color. This is of course something that we can also do with dyes created by chemical means, where the different colors are created by different site groups, but the advantage of theses kind of dyes is that they are very robust, you can make any color you want by just changing the size of it, they are very small, typically non-toxic, thats of course something that is on the mind of very many people now and they have many applications. So here is something that comes out of nanotechnology, if you want, relatively easily, it has an impact on biology immediately and maybe, maybe at some point beings as

well. In fact, here is a quantum dot that with a coating of a certain antibody that particularly accumulates in a liver and you see theres a, in a rat, you see this. So in medical research, you see that it is already playing a role. So again nanotechnology in medicine is already playing a role. The spin of the electron is an important part of the electron that in todays electronics is not being used as they are only looking at the charge, but there are ways to look at the spin of the electron and there are projects that envision that using the spin rather than the charge will allow us to go to smaller device sizes at some point in the future. This is very much at the forefront of research in meta physics. So in terms of this layer structure I had talked to you most about applications and let me just bring up one thing that is err, that I am associated with and that is these layer structures are not only good for applications which they certainly are in the optic and electronic industry, but if you make a sheet of these electrons and put a very high magnetic field on it, then something very strange is happening. The electron falls apart. What is happening if you measure the charge of the electron afterwards the charge looks like it is about a one third of the electronic charge so this is happening at very low temperatures very close to absolute zero and very high magnetic fields to the sense that if you were to take the transistor that is in your cell phone, you would cool it down to almost absolute zero and put it in a very high magnetic field, the electron cracks up. Now that is very astonishing, because our colleagues at Columbia and also I suppose here that in high energy have used the electrons and bombarded them into anything and the electrons never break up. So electrons are elementary particles to all intents and purposes and here under these conditions actually they seem to break up and in fact this is what I will talk more about this afternoon in my colloquial. This is actually called the Horne effect and actually as some very interesting, even projected applications now which just a few years back we wouldnt have thought, we would have thought just a very interesting fundamental physics result but it seems to have applications. So if you can come this afternoon. I have actually a new graph here, but let me see how much time do I have? I have 10 minutes, well actually I have two hours but I do not want to hold you that long. So let me perhaps skip

this new graph as you can see it as it is and Ill show you a bit more about this, this afternoon. Okay, so on the nanosphere, coming back to the nanosphere, well this was all nanosphere but the matter, the matter assembles itself in ways in which it wouldnt at the macroscopic scale, here is a few examples of it. Here is some gold, gold layers on the nanoscale that look, look like they are assembled in the way of pennies, This is alumina that has assembled itself in a hexagonal way, here lead sulphite quantum dots have assembled themselves in this hexagonal fashion. Zinc oxide, on a very small scale forms these rings here and also these spirals here, all of this is happening on the nanoscale. And what we know of this nowadays and we can see with an electron microscope wondering if there is an application for it and I think that this is still something to be found out. I think the poster child of this is probably carbon, so here is carbon which we know as having two modifications, one is diamond and the other is graphite, and graphite is of course so interesting, well technologically important because there are sheets of carbon that very easily glide against each other because in vertical direction they are not covalently bonded, just in the other direction, the Z direction, so they glide very easily, this is why we make grease out of them, lubricants out of them, and the other one is diamonds which has other applications Then of course in the eighties we discovered Lucky Balls which I think was a very, very exciting discovery for two reasons, I mean many reasons. I give you two in addition to those that you may already think. Number one, I think had you told people a few years before in scientific circles oh and by the way carbon can also make soccer balls you would have been laughed out of the room. This actually exists that Mother Nature would make something like this. I think most of us wouldnt have left the room, The second thing is that this is not something that we are making industrially, it is something that was around through the aeons, in fact this stuff is in meteorites. So it has been around all the time and we just didnt find it. So it took until the end of the second millennium after Christ for humanity to find out that this is another configuration of carbon. One of the interesting aspects about all of this. The more recently in about 1990 in Lima, found again using an electron microscope, a nanotube that is really a rolled up carbon sheet and what is interesting about is just remember what I told you before about the size of

the material determines its color, here the property of the material is determined by which way I roll up the graphite sheet. If I take the graphite sheet and I roll it up in this way or I roll it up in this way it has a different property. You see two graphite sheets from the side here, this is one that is rolled up in this way and this is one that is rolled up this way. This is a metal, this is a semi-conductor and it only depends on which way you roll up the material, so again on the nanoscale, the way properties evolve depends very critically in small variations in parameters. We can grow nano tubes nowadays, almost like grass, this here is a picture and we can make them extraordinarily long. This is, in fact, a result from Phillip Kim, who is at Colombia, you see nanotubes growing from a catalyst and all the way across you see nanotubes almost four centimeters long, so nanotubes they are about 1 nanometre diameter but four centimeters long. In fact, the reason that they are only four centimeters long is that is how long his equipment was, he had to stop there otherwise they would have fallen off the wall. So, in principle, you can grow these things longer, in fact much longer than that. These tubes are already used in, in fact they have been contemplated for their mechanical properties, here is a string made out of nanotubes, here is a fabric actually woven out of nanotubes and even artificial muscles are being considered made out of nanotubes in such an environment. And of the, well most of the far off projection of using nanotubes is a space elevator, where at some point if you have satellites, probably in a geo-synchronous satellite standing out there, rather than shooting a rocket up we actually have an elevator, using a string up, you can pull up material and have the same command of material coming back down. What is interesting is if you ever could make this, if you ever could make this you cannot make it out of steel, because steel is too heavy and it would just rip under its own weight. So if we ever can make this we need materials such as nanotubes which is easier. You would need a blown up version to make a space elevator and people are taking us quite seriously. And see if we could make a rolled up tape of something like this if we are ever to make a space elevator, so nanotubes have great implication for mechanics but not only this they also have great implications for electronics. I showed you this one before, this is a transistor 60 nanomentres and 180 atoms from one side to the other. This is a more recent one by Intel, 30 nanometres length, see the picture now, 20 nanometres, which is still something in the future, its not yet in your laptop, but look at the size of this nanotube compared to these transistors, this is an individual nanotube made

of carbon and look how small it is, and then what people are thinking is that we cannot use nanotubes for electronics. Here you see a nanotube lying across four contacts thats being measured and people have made transistors out of this. This is from the Hughes Group and here we see one nanometer, sorry one nanotube, lying across two contacts. Here is another one from IBM. This is actually a bi-polar, the other one is piezo in the back here you see a nanotube lying across and this is just a schematic, okay, so one can make transistors out of nanotubes and, interestingly enough, their properties are better than those of silicon. So in fact in the United States, Intel are taking this very seriously and are supporting research in this direction, where the nanotube could at some point replace silicon in the channel of fets. The trouble of course is that you do not know how to put the nanotubes into the right place first of all you need a lot of them in parallel to get the conductor that we want and, second, how do we actually put them there? We have to grow them so chemists are trying to figure out how do we grow nanotubes in exactly the right place, and we are far from it. But the properties of the individual nanotube are now very similar to those of silicon so its very promising. Ah, here is actually something that we did, just a next step this is something that we did in the Nanocentre. We took a nanotube, this is a nanotube and we cut it open and we placed in this opening with one individual molecule. We were able to place one individual molecule in there and in this case this is a metallic and this is a metallic nanotube, so this is a contact and this is a contact and then this one molecule acts, acted as a transistor, just one molecule acting as a transistor. - Video disrupted Let me tell you about my immense amazement about this one gizmo that I think that nowadays I think that the people here will all be familiar with but I found it just an incredible, incredible leap of confidence that at some point was made, in fact by Gurt Biddich who is a, with who I studied together at the University of Frankfurt. We were on the same row, next to each other, What Gurt did, or rather though of, this incredible thought he sprung. If you take two objects and you put them close to each other ever so gently, closer and closer and closer, at some point just when they are touching, the

touching is just one atom from the left and one atom from the right. And this is another one of these examples where probably a few years before people would have said, how are you going to look how this happens? Thats not something that you would theoretically think about, not really the way you want to do it. Yes you can. Now only using one hundredth, so again using my hair and if you think of making anything, if you think of making a sharp tip on the nanoscale, on a scale where the atoms are as big as soccer balls, then probably the sharpest thing that you can make is a (unintelligible) like that again. You may recognize this one so if I make this out of atoms then it may look like this and there is always one atom that is sticking out the most and here is the top and I see one atom that is sticking out and if I take this and move it along the hair I can probe, I can see the atoms. This actually works, and yes some of the students here will say I have one of these in my lab. I push the buttons and it comes out. I tell you, in 1983, I think this was not a possibility. You can do this very confidently now. Really its nothing else more than just a gramophone, a very fine gramophone. Let me just skip through the movie thing and not only can you look at things but you can move atoms around. Here you see the surface of copper and I think that its actually carbon monoxide that sitting up there, so think of it as an atom. Its just a very small molecule and you see that someone has already done the job on it, and if you look 6 hours later, 12 hours later, 24 hours later you get what is called the quantum coral which is circles of copper and carbon monoxide based in a circle around it and my point is that the feed itself made putting this together mind-boggling. What I find most mind-boggling is that you see these waves and these are just the electron waves as we know them in quantum mechanics and you can actually see this. Again is something that wasnt obvious at all that you could actually dive in and observe on the nanoscale things in such detail. That is once you have colored it in, it looks even more gorgeous than it does just from the electron microscope. Let me come back to the last few minutes, a major subject of my lecture, I told you a lot about the nanoscale and things like quantum dots and three dimensional electrons and finally about the nanotube and that it has big implications for mechanics and probably electronics but in a certain sense along the lines of John Hopkins statement but its boring, this is still after all relatively, well very boring. We walk along a nanotube and all you see is carbon atoms, carbon atoms and put you in any place and you look around

and think this looks like a lost place and on the same scale if you put DNA which is the same scale, DNA is really complex, right? Obviously, the information of life is written into it, the local environment is very different as you go along, so this is interesting in that sense whereas this is very boring and what DNA can make for example are things like us, it makes them very cheaply. Heres a biological product, what is it, fresh baby artichokes, so artichokes, just done by Mother Nature by self assembly. This is how we assemble things, this is top down, a different pattern I would think and it is a very different process. So whats missing sort of in electronics, what we still havent figured out how to do is how to grow our cell phones on trees. If you had a laptop that was about to die, you would sprout a flower take the seeds, put them in the ground and in the next week, harvest the laptop! Mother Nature does just that. So why not? You say its not possible. This maybe asking a little bit too much, you want to grow a whole laptop? Okay, fine, I give you a cell phone, although cell phones are actually more complicated than your laptops are. So lets take just a chip, can we grow a chip on a tree? Well even a circuit, I just give you a memory cell. Okay, how about we really put it down, can I make one transistor, can I grow just one transistor on a tree? Yep, there it is. Alright? This is a model that was assembled by my colleague Colin Marples that acts a transistor, electrons are coming in here, going out there and if I apply a voltage to this thing it would drop the electron flow. This is grown on a tree, this is a transistor made by Mother Nature made by self assembly. All identical up to the last atom, it probably cost about a buck to assemble 43 of them so silicon, eat you heart out, you are so proud that it is 0.001 cents per transistor that is a few orders of magnitude cheaper. So this is a transistor, so lets make wires. Well wires, I can grow them on trees. I showed you all a wire that is 4cm long, it is more conductive than copper and it is stronger than steel. What else do you want? So silicon, eat your heart out. Now of course you know thats not the problem. The crux of the matter is not to make the switches, the crux of the matter is not to make the wires, the crux is the viability. It is not how to make the components it is how to put the stuff together and, in a sense, to put this aside I find the expression silicon industry a misnomer. It really should be called lithography industry except you would have such a hard time pronouncing. That is the defining, this is the defining technology, we could probably use other semi conductors, lots of other semi conductors, had we put as much effort into gallium arsenide it probably would be as far as silicon, the real thing is how to put the stuff together, its the (unintelligible)

Right and there is only two ways of putting things together, complex things on earth, one is (unintelligible) where we are walking round in masks like Halloween and finally come up with devices like this. Mother Nature does it rather differently. Here is a Sequoia tree, here is scene of a sequoia tree and you would wait about 200 years to develop another tree. It is a very different way of assembling things. So you could say, okay, we are making great progress over here, lets just leave it to biology. Self assembly, this is a fantastic way of assembling things, all hands off, just leave it to biology. I believe that this is not so. There are big ethical reasons. I think in particular when it comes to electronics for doing data processing and so on, leaving that to biology would create lots of ethical reasons. You wouldnt want your dog to be smarter than you, well some people maybe. So I think fiddling around with the genome in this respect is probably something that we would have big difficulties with, well thats one, there is another one. Biological data processors in my mind are made of very lousy components and as much as I am sitting here with electrical engineers you may actually agree with me that the neuron is an awkward, an awkward object. It transmits signals by basically a bucket brigade, handing it down and thereby eventually telling the end that something has happened at the beginning. The speed is about 10 100metres per second, whereas we are typically transmitting at the speed of light and the switching process is awkward where a few dozen or hundreds of little vesicles have to cross some cleft, some synaptic cleft come to the other side and transmit the signal. So we should be able to do better than that. You may consider this to be heresy, but I am not sure because when we concentrate on something, some particular priorities, we are doing very well. We can argue whether we should also be able to do better in terms of data processing. And by the way this very simplistic calculation, although I dont think it is that much or that long. Our brain has 1015 synapses so it does about 1017 operations per second, something like that, you can argue a factor of ten or even a hundred with me. Your Pentium chip is about the same. You may wonder about how you can think about the origin of the universe whereas my Pentium chip in my laptop can barely run PowerPoint and it results in a poor usage of these transistors so architecture and software is something that is very important. So how can we go about it if we dont use biology? I think that there is at least two approaches. One is to use biological materials in another context. So this is not biology but use of biologically made materials and let me show you one

such example. This is using DNA as a smart molecule. This is actually artificial DNA. This is not coming out of any cell and not protected by any DNA exemplars these days. This is actually out of Max Seaman down at NYU, just about a subway ride from us. He looks at the DNA as a molecule and the addresses in it, and if you address it right you take the sequencer and you make a molecule out of it thinking about how it should assemble. We are just putting the right sequence into it and then pouring it into a glass, you get for example, this is not a typical double stranded DNA, you get this knot out of it. Here is another knot and here is a third knot, this is very important because it is programs, right, he programs it in he doesnt twist it around, he pours it in and these knots come out by themselves. This is a geometry that is created in a big machine but in a linear version and then the thing assembles itself in this knot. The most complex structure here is this Q made out of DNA programmed on the outside and then self assembled. It is all hands off. Here is another example. These are actually sheets made out of DNA. Strangely enough, by putting these cross connectors on to it you can make sheets out of it, In the end you pour it in, you can make a two dimensional sheet. You can program certain spots along the sheet that is just where you fix and bolt nanoclusters and you see here that the green thing is the sheet of DNA and the nanoclusters are sticking up there. The thought behind that is that it quickly, thats all on the nanoscale, that quickly a two dimensional scaffolding in order to build up later put circuits on top of it, self assembly. Here is probably the most ambitious of it. Here is work done by Uri Simone At the Technium in Israel where he wants to make electronic circuits self assembly. So here are the edges of the circuit, this is gold and there is a single strand of DNA attached to it that would have all different addresses. Then he pours in the complement. So this is our DNA that has two complementary addresses and they find their way. This is one that is programmed for example. This is programmed to go form here to here and eventually it finds it way. It makes its pattern which is preprogrammed but it has assembled itself, you can even be thinking even and I am going to show you in a second, of putting devices down because you have addresses on the DNA onto which you can place devices and eventually he ends up with a circuit that is self assembled. Here is an example of it, you can make a nanowire, it goes to an address here and an address here, the DNA across makes a wire out of it and you can

even place a carbon nanotube transistor, a carbon nanotube that acts as a transistor, so in this way you can make a transistor self assembled using DNA that finds its place and using a carbon nanotube that finds its way. Here is a picture of it. Its a very, very lousy transistor, it really has not a lot to speak of, but it is self assembled. It assembled itself by just programming the position in, in the first place. So thats number one. Number two is to start from square one and that would be for example self assembly of the molecules and this does not have a name. It is just chemistry and as much as I flunked chemistry as a student I am in deep admiration of chemists nowadays. My colleague Colin Marple, father of the young guy we saw earlier said, tell me what you want and Ill make it. Now hes young and probably a little bit overestimating his wizardry, but there is a lot of truth to it. Chemists can do extraordinary things. Ill just show you some other structures that we dont make and then discover them, but they really design them to be this way. So chemistry is one, but if you go beyond chemistry, they call this super molecular chemistry. You now take molecules and assemble them into bigger structures. There is one and its most amazing. There is a chain and there is one molecule walking along it, just walking along it and actually creating a product that is then attached to the chain so its like a molecule walking along another molecule. So, if you combine the super molecular chemistry that can play with molecules and make structures that are not also static but also dynamic then you add to this the atomic source microscope being able to measure forces on very small scales, being able to affect things on very small scales, which I would call super molecular physics. If you put these two together, this is what is really in my mind at the heart of nanoscience. Therefore, self assembly is an essential challenge to nanoscience, but you need to learn the simple rules from biology and apply them to non-biological studies. You have to learn the rule of the molecule-molecule game and not only in biology but also in the non-biological sciences. You have to learn how to make copies and templates and all of the other things that biology can do so well and if we explore this we are not going to (unintelligible) ambient pressure (unintelligible) we can do it on the surface of material for example. So if you look particularly at the challenge with regard to electronics, they must be simple non-biological substances that are selfassembled and the electric properties are essential. Nature is largely ignorant of electronics, all of the electronic properties, so called electronic

properties going on all over our brain and our body are largely ionic. They are not electronic, we need to keep our eye on electronic properties. So at some point in the future we should be able to combine silicon technology, which is wonderful and will not just sort of go away at some point, actually it may stay forever. The silicon technology will allow at its edges the intelligence is in the process, but at the edges you should be able to assemble ready made molecular memory cells that the silicon processor will actually assemble out of the liquid. So that the self assembled aspect of this technology will start at the edges and perhaps over time would creep in. So, with all this, why not? Why shouldnt we at some point be able grow a new laptop or a cell phone on a tree? Thanks very much. Floor open to questions. Prof. Strmer: I was hoping for enlightening discussion so we have, well we have another hour almost so please do. Question: Please sir, what is your opinion about teaching of nanoscience or nanotechnology in university. Please sir what do you think about the structure of teaching or study of nanoscience and nanotechnology? Prof. Strmer: That is a very good question. Thanks very much. I think you all heard the question, right? The question was about education in nanoscience at university I think as I showed you before that I, where nanoscience, where the disciplines meet. I think you also have to teach this between disciplines. Nanoscience is not something that can be evolved by physicists, not something that can be evolved by chemists, not by biologists and not by electrical engineers or mechanical engineers, but we have to all come together. This is very hard to do. I cannot judge how hard it would be at your university but it is hard at our university. I think that in general, probably in most education systems in a sense we are stuck with the disciplines as we created them last, last century and before that. So when we split up natural sciences into chemistry and physics and biology and the engineering sciences yet in another place.

And in another scheme all of this is coming together, our students move to have an exposure to all of this, to much of this in order to be effective in sciences and this is very hard to achieve between departments in universities. And I dont think that there is a golden way of doing it. It is something that we have to create from the bottom up, just as much as we are thinking about bottom up assembly we have to create it from the bottom up. It is, as very often the case, you need a few individuals that are excited about something to just go ahead and do it. At Columbia there are a few lecturers now that are co-taught between physicists and chemists, which is a good start. We have also a mechanical engineer who is doing this with a biophysicist sharing a lecture. This is baby steps but I think eventually we have to, we have to be able to teach this on a much broader scale and I am not sure how to do it. The best, I believe is that if there is a set of individuals that believe in this and then just create their own curriculum. I find that the students are very willing followers. In fact you could call it the other way around. The students are coming to ask us, How am I going to do this? We have, I think, I remember meetings we have in the Nanocentre, where chemists are coming over and saying, Professor Strmer, and by the way they all call me Horst, Whats the physics course that I should take so that I get a good insight into chemistry? So the chemists are coming to us and I hope the physicists are coming to the chemists. So it its from the bottom up, it will not be from the administration down. But it is the young people who are requesting this and well have to find ways to respond to that and its true it was in the present departmental structures at the university, so well have to overcome it. Speaker: Next? Prof. Strmer: I promise the next time Ill be a little bit shorter! Question: What about Carbon nanotube transistors? Prof Strmer: Carbon nanotube transistors, yes? Question: By much how are they better than silicon, do you think it can be better..? PH Speaks over. Prof Strmer: They have sharper (unintelligible) so for a given voltage they would have less leakage from them. I do not know, I do not have the number in my head. But they are significantly better that IBM has started a

engineering group actually working on carbon nanotubes, so this is an effort of about five or six people so they are taking it very seriously. In fact there is even an Intel group looking into this. But let me point out again, I dont know who asked that, but let me point out again, the important aspect of this or the difficult aspect of this is not how you make this stuff, the difficult aspect is how to place these carbon nanotubes where you want them. You have a great way of putting a transistor where I want it, by using photolithography, we have no great way to put a carbon nanotube someplace. Nowadays we are using an atomic force microscope and slowly nudging them into place. This is not a large scale manufacturing chronology, you have to find ways how to do this and I am not sure that we will. They may be incompatible with circuits, its not clear whether we can. But then again we wouldnt have thought there was a carbon nanotube in the first place, so who knows? Any questions? Question: Do you think that about the extrapolation of Moores law (unintelligible) reach atomic size? Prof Strmer: Yes, that is a very good question. The question is about the extrapolation of Moores law . Let me tell you a little story about it, its a short story. I go to a conference every two years, sometimes every three years, which is called the future of, its not silicon technologies, its called, well lets call it the future of silicon. And about ten years ago I was invited to chair a round table discussion about the future of silicon, more than ten years, fifteen years ago. You get the usual discussion, everybody is saying, well giving their own opinion about it, it was not clear how much progress was being made at that point so I thought instead of having a panel we just go into vote. So we had about 50 people there and we were voting, when is silicon going to run out of steam. Well it turns out it was about 5 years from now. We had the same conference again last year. I wasnt there but my colleague took the poll. Guess what? Five years from now. So this is now fifteen years in between, but I think the arguments are getting stronger and stronger that about, well I would think no more than ten years from now probably. I mean there is good reason to believe that ten years from now, its hard. But again, engineers and technologies have come around to overcome so many revolutions, in the 70s who would have thought that a micron would now be

20 nanometres. Its incredible so I wouldnt venture to say that it is not, but Ill venture to say one thing, it will stop. There is a question back there. If you just say it, I can repeat it. Question: Horst can you pretend again that you were a first year post-doc, which topic would you pick now? Prof. Strmer: If I were a first year.. Question: a first year post doc in condensed matter of training Prof Strmer: If I were a first year condensed matter post doc, which topic would I pick? I have admission to make. For my last, of my last three graduate students, one went to Cornell and worked with carbon nanotubes, she is now a professor at Penn State, The second one went to Illinois became a biophysicist and the third one is just coming back from a trip to Berkeley and tells me that she has an offer to become a bio-physicist.. So I am not sure what this is telling you, but my wife is telling me that I am a lousy teacher. But I think that is whats happening and I dont discourage my students. Never mind bio-physics, I think its the inter-disciplinarity. I look very much as a condensed matter physicist. I look very much that I have as least as much connection to the chemistry department as I have to my high energy physicists. What we are really working on nowadays and I am convinced it is working on the nanoscale and what my chemists are talking to me about is very much what I am talking about. So I believe inter-disciplinarity is really the order of the day. So if I was a post doc condensed matter physicist then I would go and do something that is at the border of something else, which for example means that I would do bio-physics, working perhaps with a group that does condensed matter chemistry, materials science. I think its the boundaries where the excitement is and where we will be the future. It will have an impact on science, on technology no doubt, but it will also have an impact on teaching. I think it will a huge impact on how the departments for arts and sciences and engineers will be put together. I believe in ten years it will not look the same anymore. It was a long answer and a little bit evasive, but okay, right bio.. hyphenated physics! Question.

Question: Yes I am from the mechanical department (unintelligible)(unintelligible) Prof Strmer: You say, let me see whether I can re-cast the question because there is a lot of room there. You are saying that there is lots of talk about nanoscience and err, but its very hard to implement a lot of it. I agree with you. I am of two minds on this. The one is I agree with you that the word nano, in many cases, is very much hyped, its over hyped. Everybody thinks, even government thinks and looks into whether they are falling behind in nanoscience, the funding agencies listen up, if you do not have the word nano in your next proposal then you do not get funded. But I think that this is really unfortunate. That does not say that nano itself really does have a place in the world or in the world of science. I believe that, I strongly believe that nanoscience will have a huge impact and, therefore, we have to go ahead with it. We have to pursue it. If it is in an area where there is lots of hype it is ours, particularly the most senior peoples job to put things in perspective. So if you make a connection with the already existing nanoscience or what you call it or the technology that is out there that is nano or chemistry that is nano and otherwise but just stonily pursue it. I dont think it is so that all of nano is hyped, certainly not . (Video disrupted) Its an exciting time, a very exciting time. At some point you will look back to the late 90s of the last century and all of this started up. There is a question back there, Oh sorry here, yes please. Question: You mentioned the United States, what about here, is there a good support to continue this research in Europe or how you say? Prof Strmer: Is there good support for research in the United States or in Europe? Question: Europe in comparison with the United States Prof Strmer: How does research funding compare between Europe and the United States are you asking that?

Question: What is the background, the environment to nanoscience? Prof Strmer: Oh, oh particularly for nano. Actually I feel that it is very good. On the scale of things, I mean first of all you have to look at research funding in general. We scientists are always complaining that we are not getting enough and the administration always says that we are getting too much. So I think that there is healthy competition and we have to keep it up on both sides, it makes us honest in a way. So I would think that the funding in nano is actually very good on the scale of things, now everybody would like to have more money to build the next new submarine or to build the next x-ray satellite or to pursue condensed molecular chemistry or whatever but I think that scale actually nano is funded very well. It has been funded very well in the United States over time and I say that if you dont have the word nano in your proposal then you wont get funded which is an implication of that, unfortunately. I think actually in Europe from what I understand, nano is funded similarly well, the word nano is something that applies to all of these funding agencies, the world inter disciplinarity fund and as much again that much of this hype is fortunate, so we are all being funded relatively well. I can tell you many stories of people who were under funded but I listen to other colleagues who have gone away from nano and their stories are worse. So I would think that funding for nano in the United States and Europe is good compared to general science funding. I think we should have more science funding in general. I think that this is a way to solve a lot of our difficulties but I think on a relative scale. I think its well and comparable between Europe and the United States. There was a question there. Question: Part of this business is nano problems start eight years ago, this construction of nanostructures and nanobodies started at (unintelligible) in the States and then ended up at (unintelligible) in Germany. We know the results of this nanotechnology ceramics parts for the space shuttle for example. Now the time is looking like drawing at hand for the material research and they try to switch it to the biology and medicine. How you see the progress in this field? Do you think you can wait such tremendous progress like material research? Prof Strmer: Well I do not believe that nano is at the end of its road in material science. I really dont believe. I mean as much as you pointed out

ceramics, I think there are many other materials. Look, I deeply believe and I dont think that you would disagree, macroscopic material properties anything surrounding that, is interpreted on the nano scale and if you find ways of modifying that on the nano scale we have huge margins on the macroscopic scale to change material sciences. I think, I think weve just skimmed the cream so far. Its the easy low hanging fruits that we have so far. I do not see the end of material science at all. It will get harder Im sure. Right, I know thats what the whole overhanging fruit. I do not believe that we wont make progress by combining mechanic and transport structures, getting combined improvement where we get very strong materials with still high electronic transportation properties. I dont see that at all. I just think its going to get harder as it always does in the sciences as I think my diploma in Frankfurt always said, If it were easy, it would be dull. Along the lines of biology, I strongly believe that, that nano will have a big impact on biology and vice versa and I dont even look at it as one or the other. I would think that its biologists and chemists and mechanical engineers and physicists coming together and tackling, tackling questions in biology that the biologists by themselves cannot do, that the physicists couldnt tackle. You need all of this input so I, I believe that nanoscience has a great future in biology. Right, its the right length scale, its a very interesting problem set. Its, we can address it in the condensed metaphysics community, in the chemistry community, in the biology community and theres a follow up question. Go ahead. Question: May I interrupt you? My question was this. You in the States started with nanotechnology twenty years before Europe because you started in the early eighties. Now we find that nanotechnology would provide an application now because the Europe Union paid the money for this and we said, Now. Look they said, They have invented this before already. They said, Space shuttle technology already uses nanotechnology and you have experience also in the bio. We start now reaching up their nanotechnology but the migration was a little bit to, to application, to the biology because you already have twenty to fifteen years before so this was why I asked. Prof Strmer: So youre saying in material science we see already applications and what, since all of this started twenty years ago, wheres the applications in biology, is that your question? Audience: Yes

Prof Strmer: Wheres the impact on biology? Well again, you saw the example of quantum nano dots that are used in biology. Theres an application. These nano dots are being used in other settings, for example you have specific absorptions that are possibly of interest for treatment of individual cells that absorb a particular energy at a particular frequency so I think were just at the beginning of it. Look, twenty years is not that long nowadays. I mean twenty years of research until you actually get into a clinical setting is not a long time. Speaker: I hope there is a question in the upper room. Prof Strmer: Ah! Speaker: So Ill try to switch over there. Prof Strmer: Sir, sir, we do not hear you. We have to switch on your microphone. Question: Good morning, can you hear me now? Prof Strmer: Can you speak a little bit louder? Question: Louder than this? This is a very basic question but, firstly, I need an answer. Do you hear me? Prof Strmer: Sorry I missed it. Speaker: You have to speak up. Speak loudly. Question: Louder than this? Prof Strmer: Okay, its okay. Question: This is very basic question. I had a chance to work during my Bachelors study on the basics of nanoscience. Now the problem was that it was very difficult to touch the basic concepts. In order to learn how to apply the concepts, you must know what are the concepts and it involves studying basic solid state physics and I also I found that all the roads lead to quantum

mechanics in the end. For an electrical engineer, its a little bit difficult to get acquainted with all the things in a deep way and there are some basic questions that I wont mention now and it took me to three students in Prague just to find the answer. Of course, in the end, I did struggle. So, from you, I have the question that how a student can get well acquainted with the principles and applications of nanoscience in a good time, in finite time, because there are other subjects which also must be tackled but can you tell us the short way how an inquisitive student can make it? Speaker: Your question is clear. Audience: Thank you Prof Strmer: I appreciate that it was a simple question and it all came through. Again, I mean we have mentioned before how are you going to teach nanoscience which Im trying to look at you when I think theres probably a camera there I think a question very similar was raised before. How do you teach nanoscience and are we going to teach the next generation of students and how do we do it? I think your question is along this line and, as I said before, I do not think I have a kings pass and I think youre a very good example of showing us that its the students who are telling us what we have to do. It will not come down from the administration about how theyre going to teach nanoscience until students are coming to our office and asking exactly the kind of question that you are asking and well have to I do not have a kings pass on how to do this. If you ask specifically, I mean if you were to ask specifically and came to my office and asked how do I, how do I get into quantum mechanics, what course should I take in order to understand a little bit of quantum mechanics, the ones that I need for an electrical engineer, I would be able to give you advice and say, Take the course of Professor XYZ because I think he treats it in a way that is appropriate for what you want to get out of it, but I do not have a general work study. I cannot tell you take the nanoscience curriculum at Columbia. We do not have it. I think, in a sense, it is very good that you ask this question because there is a professor sitting in this audience and it will have the impact to hear from you as one individual as to where you want to go and what people more senior have to do in the future in order to educate it the way you want to educate it and you told them already what is out there. Question: You mentioned that Moore is different. Is there out there somewhere some basic nanophysics laws which emerge on the microscopic

functions and, more to the previous question, do you hope that nano (unintelligible)_ Prof Strmer: All those are excellent questions. I do not have the answer. I think that this is, well, okay, let me repeat the question if I can. The question is that I brought up Moore is different and the reason that youre asking me the question is where are we on that scale, how different is it and where are the nanoscience laws? And Im afraid to tell you, we dont know but Im happy to tell you, we want to know and we want to figure out, and I think, let me put it this way, I think this is at the heart if nanoscience, this is exactly what we need to figure out, this is exactly the challenge I think of this century in this area. You asked for what are the laws of the nanoscale, we dont know. We dont know and its not clear. As I said before, its not clear whether there are laws. It may be just one rule after the other. Theres this rule and this rule and if you do that then you get that. Right, we may be at the end of the laws, at least on this field. Im not saying at the end of science but we may be at the end of laws. There may be not a (unintelligible) equation, there may be not another equation, just rule after rule after rule which sounds non-satisfactory. Course of all, I may be wrong and there may be really laws which we havent discovered yet. Im afraid there may be not any laws. Then well wonder where science is going, what science means because were always out there looking for the next big equation and (unintelligible) can take us some place but it doesnt have any impact in nanoscience. Right? There may be things that we discover about dark energy that we dont know yet but, on the scale of nano science, we may just not have other laws. We have lots of rules that we discovered, then you wonder where were heading. Sorry, theres another question. Question: I have one question concerning the question of a fellow student I know him. Prof Strmer: I think you should use a microphone because I think nobody can hear. Audience: The new curricula of the new program of nanoscience was initiated by our lecturer and I am in the team of people who initiated this curricula and we are very happy that, in our university, we are not only

studying chemistry and physics but biological department, biomedicine department and across the street, we have a list including chemical technology and includes many courses that are indexed in biology and chemistry as a part of nanoscience. We would be happy to have good hands in this background, good curricula. Prof Strmer: I understand that the next year you will celebrate your 300th anniversary. Im coming from Columbia where we just celebrated our 250th anniversary two years ago. Youre always ahead of us! Its great, I mean thats wonderful news. Question: Can you explain.. Prof Strmer: Can you explain, in terms of the purity of the reaction? No, Im afraid Im not enough of a chemist to do this. I know at some point I said 10 to the power of 23 molecules for ten dollars and theyre all identical. Of course, theyre not and that is a big issue. Chemists know that they do not have 100% success in their synthesis so these are certainly things that somebody has to tackle but I would not be able to give you an answer. This seems to be much more a chemists issue than it is a physicists. Prof Strmer: Okay, Im sorry, I misunderstood, youre asking about the health implication? Okay, sorry, youre bringing up an interesting point. Sorry I misunderstood. I think that the point that youre bringing up is whether on the nano scale, if we are creating objects on the nano scale, what will be the impact on biology in general and, perhaps, health sciences and health? Its a question that is being asked in the United States more and more and I think its very good that its being asked, I mean one of the concerns, for example, whether the nano tubes have similar kind of effects as asbestos because when you inhale it and I think 10% of the budget on nano science is now being spent on the health implications of nano science and I think this is very important to do, no question about it. And we have to safeguard ourselves that whatever we do in the nano sphere does not have detrimental health effects so I think this is money wisely spent. It could be a lot more expensive afterwards but, more so, we want to make sure that we wont have a negative health impact. On the other hand, this should not keep us from pushing on with nanaoscience because we are saying theres some negative impact. We should be studying this in a scientific way and

understand what the health impact is. Probably we will find things that we have to be very careful with and others that are really benign. I think its the right attitude to study the health impacts at the same time as we study the science. Prof Strmer: Youre talking about the nanobots? Youre concerned that carbon nano tubes will take over the world? Well, what youre doing is youre asking the question. I cannot give you the answer. I mean I feel, I feel that we are in terms of self assembly, the one that is guiding these rumors. We are so much at the beginning that questions about runaway self assembly are so much in the future. I believe we do not have a problem to be very much concerned about at the moment. I think at some point, if what I showed you in growing laptops on trees would ever come to fruition, I mean before that wed certainly have to start worrying about not having real trees anymore, only laptops. So, yes, but I think that it is far in the future and, of course, it was only a loose picture. I do not want to grow laptops on trees. I want to self assemble soft units. You have a concern and youre not the only one but I think this is something that is far in the future and will be decided not by us but, at the end of the day, by our children and, perhaps, by our childrens children. But all this world is about what we want to get out if it and that is further down the line. The decision in this context will be made by other generations but I think thats no concern of ours. Speaker: Im afraid that I have to say last question because we are approaching the end of todays session. Question: This question is related to the previous question about the theory behind nanoscience. Its true that the structures are very complex so its probably (unintelligble) What about the carbonite structures, the nano tubes or the carbonite carpets? There is a lot of geometry running along this pathology. Is there any mathematical background appearing behind these circuits and structures? Prof Strmer: What structures again? Question: Carbonite structures like these nano tubes or Prof Strmer: Well, I would think, I would think these structures are very well understood these days. The electronic properties of carbon nano tubes,

why they are semi conducting, why they do this is well understood. We even understand defects within them. We understand, for example, that, in addition you can turn a metallic one into a semiconductor if you kink it. These days, whats of very great interest right now is single graphite sheets and Ill say a bit more this afternoon. This is a hot topic right now which, in fact, was originated by (unintelligble)_ at Columbia. We are working on this so, individual graphite sheets are very very interesting. But again, theyre not figures out at all but this is a very accurate research field but basically one has to apply the knowledge we have from conventional physics. It is a technological problem how to make them how to study them. There are big challenges there but basically we know, well you should never say this but, this will not change our view of what condensed metaphysics is. They are very good theories that are flying. We are able to handle this very well. Its exciting but its a, it does not require a new training for us. It works fine. Speaker: Im very sad to say thank you very much, thank you today for your effort.