nanotechnology--6/11/25
Today's selection-- from Industrial Policy for the United States by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher. Nanotechnology powers key modern technologies, but while the U.S. led in its science, it lags in manufacturing and commercialization.
“Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at scales from a fraction of a nanometer to a few hundred nanometers — sizes between individual atoms and small single-celled organisms — at which it has radically different properties. Nanotech is already significant in many industries. Integrated circuits are a form of nanotech. Other nanotech provides the light, strong composites in aircraft and space vehicles. Still other nanotech powers the solid-state lasers used to transmit information through the internet and the light-emitting diodes in LED light bulbs and flat-screen TVs. Nanotech also makes possible solar cells, the batteries in electric cars, and medical technologies such as vaccines. It is thus the unifying thread of many of today's most advanced technologies. Unfortunately, America is falling behind.
“In the future, nanotech-based quantum computing and communications will lead to more powerful computers, transforming national security and internet commerce by making currently secret communications insecure. Medical nanotechnologies will permit targeted interventions at the cellular level, providing new weapons against diseases, biological weapons, and defenses against them. China is known to be working on these.
“Much of the science underpinning these advances was developed at firms and universities in the US. But the huge manufacturing industries built on it are mostly overseas. For example, the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology Kodak created didn't save that firm from going bankrupt in 2012. But it did enable lucrative businesses for Korea's Samsung, to whom Kodak licensed the technology, and LG, which bought Kodak's entire OLED business in 2009. Today, American firms like Nanosys and Universal Display develop important nanotechnologies, but do not actually manufacture the end products and are thus relatively small.
“How did the US get itself into this situation? A major government program, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), has been funded since 2001, but Washington failed to appreciate the importance of having both a technology and a manufacturing strategy. The prevailing wisdom was that if the academic science was supported, mass manufacturing would follow automatically. By contrast, successful rival nations in nanotech have focused on making these technologies manufacturable at scale, employing every policy tool from R&D subsidies to cheap capital to tariffs. A 2020 National Academies review of the NNI urged that the US recognize that ‘the recent, focused, and in some cases novel commercialization approaches of other nations may be yielding better societal outcomes.’
“Today's nanotech emerged from many scientific disciplines, including chemistry, physics, and materials science, and from existing electronic, chemical, and biomedical technologies. Many of its pivotal advances were made in private-sector laboratories. For example, the scanning tunneling microscope was invented at IBM in 1986, and a few years later, a similar device was used to arrange individual atoms to spell out the letters ‘IBM.’ This tool was the first of a whole new series of nanotools: A related device, the atomic force microscope, is today in even wider use in labs around the world.
“By the late 1990s, after the revolution in IT and biotechnology, there were hopes that nanotech would soon produce a similar wave of innovative spinoffs and startups. But outside of aerospace and medicine, commercializing underlying nanotech discoveries has turned out to be more difficult than expected.
“President Clinton announced NNI in 2000, citing the success of Sematech as a precedent. By 2003, its budget exceeded $1 billion a year, and by 2024 (requested), $2.2 billion. Today, about two fifths of its money goes to the National Institutes of Health, a quarter goes to the Department of Energy, and the rest mainly to the Defense Department and National Science Foundation. Cumulative funding for NNI and its predecessors since 2001, including its 2024 budget request, exceeds $43 billion.
“NNI does fund some programs designed to transfer technology to industry. For example, starting in 2018, the Presidential Management Agenda's Lab-to-Market Cross-Agency Priority Goal has sought to improve the transfer of technology from federally funded R&D to the private sector. But outside biotech and aerospace, NNI, unlike the programs of America's rivals, has not financially supported big companies with the resources to develop and deploy nanotech at
“Nanotechnology requires costly facilities with high operational expenses and specialized staff. Capital costs include clean rooms, nanofabrication equipment, advanced microscopes, and other equipment to characterize the properties of nanomaterials. Only the largest corporations can afford this hardware, so startups need shared, government-supported facilities. The National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, established in 2001 to meet this need, has since evolved into the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which in 2024, reported its scope thus:
“The 16 NNCI sites and their 13 partners (universities, colleges, national labs, and non-profit foundations) provide access to more than 2,200 tools located in 71 distinct facilities. As will be detailed later in this report, these tools have been accessed during Year 8 by more than 13,000 users including nearly 3,600 external users, representing more than 220 US academic institutions, nearly 800 small and large companies, 47 government and non-profit institutions, as well as nearly 40 foreign entities. Overall, these users have amassed more than 1 million tool hours.
“Total NNCifunding since its inception in 2014 has been $165 million. There are other major government initiatives. DOD funds MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, which concentrates on enhancing military protection and survivability through nanotech-based body armor, specialized clothing, battlefield wound management, detection, evasion, and communication. NIH has its Cancer Nanotechnology Plan. Organizations such as the University of California's Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology research the dangers of nanoparticle toxicity, while NIST, the FDA, and the EPA develop the corresponding regulatory policy. This precautionary and preemptive research and regulation are essential to maintaining public confidence in nanotech, which otherwise risks the fate of nuclear energy, a valuable technology curtailed due to overblown fears.
“About the same time as NNI was launched, major initiatives were getting underway in the EU, in its member states, in Korea, in Japan, and later in China.
“The EU's initial program allocated $1.9 billion from 2001 to 2006, with this roughly doubled for the next five-year period. Japan's 2006 Third Science and Technology Basic Plan set nanotech as one of four priority areas. Korea's stated goal in its 2006 Nanotechnology Development Plan was to be in the top three in the world for nanotechnology and nanomaterials. China's Thirteenth FiveYear Plan for Science and Technology Innovation, covering 2016-20, cited nanotechnology as the first of 13 Major Strategic and Forward-Looking Scientific Issues.
“The scientific achievements of these national programs are often measured by number of papers published. By raw count, the EU had always produced more than the US, but it was displaced from the top spot by China in 2014. If one adjusts for quality by taking only the top 10 percent most cited papers, America's performance looks somewhat better.
“Governmental support for commercialization has been less in the EU, where state aid rules limit large-scale corporate subsidies, than in the East Asian countries. The EU and its member states have instead emphasized basic science, shared facilities, and supporting spin-offs through grants and government contracts. In addition, the EU has programs to nurture startups, including its Start-up Scale-up Initiative and its Innovation Radar Initiative, which are not specific to nanotech but include it.
“Europe has had some nanotech successes, but also spectacular failures. In the first category is the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) in Leuven, Belgium. IMEC's $896 million yearly budget comes from the Flemish regional government, EU grants, and contract research for industry. Its Advanced Patterning Center, a joint research center with the Dutch company ASML, has helped secure ASML's global monopoly of the extreme ultraviolet lithography tools needed to make the world's most advanced computer chips.
“One UK effort, on the other hand, is an example of how not to support nanotech. This 2003 initiative, funded at $63 million a year from 2003 to 2009, set up a network of 24 micro-and nanotechnology centers across the country. But funding and other resources were spread far too thin, so the centers never achieved critical mass. They were not well connected with the academic researchers generating new science or with the industries that were supposed to commercialize it. Nor were they equipped to recognize market opportunities. Most disappeared without a trace and with no public accountability.
“Germany is Europe's leader in nanotech research and applications. The Fraunhofer Institutes' Nanotechnology Alliance conducts practical research for industrial applications. The Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest public scientific organization ($6.5 billion annual budget, 70 percent from government) works to integrate nano- and micro-systems. The pure-science-oriented Max Planck Society ( $ 2.3 billion budget) works on nanomaterials, supramolecular (multi-molecule) systems, and characterization methods. The Leibniz Association, a 97-member group of nonuniversity research entities ($2.4 billion), has achieved significant results in nanomaterials, surfaces, and opto- and nano-electric properties.
“In nanotech, China for a long time followed the development model practiced in the rest of East Asia for decades — that is, commercializing technologies developed elsewhere. But in recent years, according to its latest Five-Year Plan, it has begun aiming to generate original research as well. Nanotech is a central element in its ‘Made in China 2025’ plan to achieve dominant positions in all of high-tech manufacturing.”
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