Google the word "nano" and you get nearly 70 million results — ranging from the iPod Nano to nano tennis rackets, to some very esoteric and futuristic concepts. Nanotechnology is a relatively new field involving engineering on a scale of individual atoms. The technology will surely result in new materials and also the improvement of existing materials. Uses of the new materials will range from new medical devices to incredible car paint to stronger and lighter sporting equipment. In fact Kevin Maney at USA Today reported that nanotech will eventually make better-performing yacht racing masts, hockey sticks, vaulting poles, softball bats, golf clubs and tennis rackets. He says the technology will help make lighter racing bikes and race cars and even make a golf ball go straighter based on the physics of the material it is made from.
Not that sports are not important, but IBM has some much bigger ideas. Last week I visited the IBM Research Nanoscience Department at the TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York — a nice half-hour motorcycle ride along the reservoirs of Westchester County. In the same building is the second most powerful computer in the world (IBM also built the most powerful one which is installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has built more than half of the 500 most powerful computers in the world).
The reason IBM is investing millions of dollars in nanotechnology is that it wants to make sure that it will have the fastest computers in the world twenty years from now. Today’s computers are built using silicon chips which are manufactured using a chemical process that has been constantly refined over the past forty years. Progress has been exponential but the end of the runway is in sight. Although various creative techniques are enabling continued improvements in speed, a new approach is needed fairly soon. Enter carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are unique structures with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties. An ideal nanotube can be thought of as a hexagonal network of carbon atoms that forms a hollow cylinder. The nanotubes are "made" using a vapor deposition process in an extremely hot gas furnace. The nanotube model I saw at IBM looked like something my grandchildren would build with LEGOs. The real nanotubes are extremely thin — their diameter is about 10,000 times smaller than a human hair! Needless to say, you can’t see the nanotubes with the human eye and hence, the scanning tunneling microscopes (invented by Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd K. Binnig at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland for which they were awarded a Nobel prize) is a key tool for the researchers.
It was exciting to walk into one of IBM’s nanoscience laboratories. The equipment in the small room was breathtaking — millions of dollars worth of plumbing, cabling, tubing, tanks of gasses, and computers everywhere. It was an awesome feeling to be in a room where work is being done at the molecular level. I actually saw a demonstration of a nanotube switch turn on and off. On and off means ones and zeroes and the speed of the chips made from this technology will make today’s chips look like slow pokes.
The most impressive part of the visit was the two young scientists who described and demonstrated the nano technology. They were highly impressive and enthusiastic about their work and dedicated to solving the key problems that will be occurring fifteen to twenty years from now. I asked them whether they were from a chemistry, physics, or electrical engineering background. Their answer was yes. The whole experience gave me goose bumps, especially knowing that there are thousands more like them at IBM’s research labs around the world.

• The Nanotube Site — site with many links to sites dedicated to nanotubes