When Micro Meets Nano This just in! This just in! This just in!

In the beginning was Richard Feynman. Feynman, of course, was the Caltech professor and eventual Nobel Laureate in physics who tipped the world to the wonders of "nanotechnology" in a seminal speech at an annual meeting of Caltech's American Physical Society. Feynman titled his speech "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." It was four days after Christmas, 1959. More recently, it seems that almost every other day is Christmas in the world of nanoscience, as "breakthrough" announcements from around the world pile up like so many gifts under the tree. Whether or not they're actual gifts to the field or just baubles remains to be seen, because the world of rearranging atoms is nothing if not tricky, particularly in the thin-film industries. "Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?" Feynman famously asked. For readers—burrowing into their work like the ants that appear in so many micrographs to show scale—a better question is, "Why can't we make all those red boxes in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors go away?" Certainly, researchers both public and private are plodding toward that goal, with governments and universities around the world playing key roles. Since its 2000 launch by the Clinton administration, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has helped start research centers at more than 30 universities. This effort includes the recent launch of the California NanoSystems Institute, a collaboration among UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and SPM specialists such as Digital Instruments/Veeco. SOURCE: ITRS; ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES SCHLESINGER NNI has inspired Japan to pursue its own program to the tune of $410 million annually, according to one of the initiative's key backers. In late September Taiwan said it will invest approximately $290 million in a research center. Targeted to open in July 2002,