Why Nano Technology? Why Now? And What Might Its Impact on Electronics

Nanotechnology is dramatically changing electronics, through the development of nano-enabled systems. These systems incorporate novel nanostructures that integrate functional complexity directly into each individual nanoparticle, enabling the low-cost fabrication of revolutionary high-value, high-performance applications in a broad range of industries from life and physical sciences to information technology and communications to renewable energy to defense. These nanostructures include nanowires, nanorods, nanotetrapods and nanodots formed from all of the industrially important semiconductor materials (Group II-VI, III-V and IV) as their principal active elements. These systems exploit the fundamentally new and unique electronic, optical, magnetic, interface and integration properties associated with materials on the nanometer-scale. The initial applications include exquisitely sensitive chemical and biological sensors, high performance large area macroelectronics and lightweight high efficiency conformal photovoltaics. This talk will describe why now is the right time to focus on nanotechnology and how one company is using these ideas to revolutionize electronics.