Have Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Delivered? n 2000, then U.S. President Clinton announced the first, large-scale, government-sponsored program directly into the nascent field of nanotechnology (NT), initially with some US$495 million in funding.1 Sixteen years later, we can look back and ask if the incredible fanfare around the field was justified. This issue is something the editors at ACS Nano are frequently asked to address.2,3 Certainly, there has been a tremendous positive impact on scientific research across the globe. Today, virtually all developed countries have created NT-dedicated research programs, research fellowships, networks, institutes, and educational initiatives that aim to understand and to leverage nanoscale discoveries.
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There is a strong need to innovate beyond expensive, though conventional, cleanroom processing, and this need is driving the emergence of new classes of products through wet chemistry. modified photosynthetic bacteria as a catalyst. They claim that they will ultimately be able to produce ethanol at a cheaper price than through traditional routes using sugarcane, biomass, or corn. Numerous companies offer nanoscale materials as commodities (e.g., PlasmaChem GmbH, Nanopartz Inc.), while large-scale monolayer graphene produced by roll-to-roll, metal−organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is now a reality (CIGIT), as well as tonne-scale production of carbon nanotubes (US$200/kg). So, the materials are there, and the science has deliveredat least four Nobel Prizes in the last decade have been awarded for nanoscience-based discoverieswhy does the public remain concerned? Understanding molecular events at the nanoscale entails the use of sophisticated scientific equipment for measurement, cleanroom facilities for fabrication, supercomputers for predictive modeling, and atomic-level microscopy to image structures and to measure properties. Such expensive research takes place in the rarefied atmosphere of advanced science laboratories around the world. However, this turns out not to be the biggest challenge. Taking unusual nanoscale phenomena or quantum effects out of the laboratory and harnessing them in real-world applications is turning out to be far harder than expected. It is a long and risky path from nanoscience to real-world products. Some of these challenges include: 1. Resilience and robustness of fragile nanoscale materials. 2. Scale-up of production methods. 3. Integration of nanoscale components into conventional devices. 4. Instability and reactivity of nanoscale materials. 5. Societal resistance to change. 6. Human health, environmental, and regulatory hurdles. Nanoscale materials are generally more sophisticated, costly, and complex to engineer than bulk materials, and consequently, they can be more expensive to maintain. Interactions of nanoscale materials with living systems are particularly complex, and this aspect has slowed the clinical impact of NT, as medical researchers wrestle with understanding how nanoscale materials are processed, digested, and removed under in vivo
Nano-related companies are making headway across the globe in diverse application areas. The science is flourishing because the technologies it supports are delivering results. The global nanotechnology market continues to grow at double-digit rates, though more slowly than a decade ago. Market investment agencies such as ResearchandMarkets.com predict steady growth of the field at 17% annually for the coming decade, reaching a global value of US$75 billion in 2020.4 This ongoing impact will in turn drive solid research-sector and venture capital (VC) investment. In some ways, the field of nanotechnology was fortunate to be seeded at a time when Silicon Valley had endured a crash (2000) and investors sought new directions, but the field was equally unlucky in that the global financial crisis in 2008 led to the collapse of many nanotech-based ventures. At its prime, in 2005, there were more than 1200 nanotech startupsbut even then, only 10% of these startups received VC funding, and of those, only 10% received more than one round of support.5 A decade later, nano-related companies are making headway across the globe in diverse application areas. In the energy sector, nanotechnology is a key driver for lowering the price of solar cell production (e.g., Nanosolar) while display and lighting technologies are employing quantum size effects to control luminescence in next-generation conducting polymer and quantum-dot displays (e.g., Samsung, QDVision, Cambridge Display Technologies). At the other end of the spectrum, a large number of biotech companies are exploiting nanomaterials for drug delivery or biolabeling (e.g., Starpharma). Such applications are sometimes called “nano-enabled” because they utilize a combination of technologies but include nanotechnology as a key component. Thus, the nanotechnology contribution to the economy is significantly more extensive, more pervasive, and perhaps more subtle than we might imagine. On the environmental side, Joule Unlimited is working to produce biofuels from waste carbon dioxide, using genetically © 2016 American Chemical Society
Published: August 23, 2016 7225
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b05344 ACS Nano 2016, 10, 7225−7226
Editorial
www.acsnano.org
ACS Nano
Editorial
conditionsin nanopharmacokinetics.6,7 Furthermore, what can be achieved routinely at a lab bench often does not lend itself to scale-up, high-throughput processing, or the costcutting needed for commercial competitiveness. Increasingly, the bottlenecks are in nanoscale engineering, in processing nanoscale materials, and in integration of new nanoscale features into existing devices. There is a strong need to innovate beyond expensive, though conventional, cleanroom processing, and this need is driving the emergence of new classes of products through wet chemistry. This approach includes the use of nanomaterials in inks and coatings; in functional surfaces such as self-cleaning materials in polymerbased electronics; for improved mass transfer in batteries and fuel cells; for better membranes for desalination; and for smart, lighter, more durable textiles. The advent of nanoimprint lithography and other soft-lithography techniques has been an important enabler. The main impact of nanoscience and NT as a “disruptive technology” will probably come in the next decades as the processing roadblocks are lifted by the development of new, lower cost fabrication routes for nanoscale commodities, and industry can reliably troubleshoot all the likely difficulties in production and scale-up, making investment less risky. Science at the nanoscale will continue to forge new technologies for the foreseeable future, and it will also continue to inspire research across physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and medicine in the decades to come.
Paul Mulvaney, Associate Editor
Paul S. Weiss, Editor-in-Chief
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) https://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/ostp/ NSTC%20Reports/NNI2000.pdf. (2) Weiss, P. S. Where are the Products of Nanotechnology? ACS Nano 2015, 9, 3397−3398. (3) Moehwald, H.; Weiss, P. S. Is Nano a Bubble? ACS Nano 2015, 9, 9427−9428. (4) http:/ /ww w.prnew sw ir e.com /news-r ele ases/globalnanotechnology-market-outlook-2015-2020---industry-will-grow-toreach-us-758-billion-507155671.html. (5) Marx, V. Watching Peptide Drugs Grow Up. C&EN News 2005, 83 (11), 17−24. (6) Rivera Gil, P.; Oberdörster, G.; Elder, A.; Puntes, V.; Parak, W. J. Correlating Physico-Chemical with Toxicological Properties of Nanoparticles: The Present and the Future. ACS Nano 2010, 4, 5527−5531. (7) Park, K. Facing the Truth about Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery. ACS Nano 2013, 7, 7442−7447.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b05344 ACS Nano 2016, 10, 7225−7226
