What Is Nano?
“Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible,” Albert Einstein once remarked. And it takes a unique mind to see the possibilities in materials that are all but invisible -- as small in size as one-billionth of a meter, also known as a nanometer.
 Physics Professor Uri Sivan
head of the Technion's RBNI.
But as nanoscientists learn to observe and work with matter on this incredibly small scale, they are discovering how substances at that size often display unique and exciting properties properties we can employ to develop amazing new electronic and mechanical devices, new biomedical materials, new answers for many of the world’s most pressing needs.
“Research into more efficient harvesting of sunlight for energy and decomposition of greenhouse gases by nanometer size particles is rapidly growing,” says Physics Professor Uri Sivan, head of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion.
You’ll be hearing a lot about “nano” in the years to come, as nanoscience discoveries translate into nanotechnology applications. The pioneering pure research and the brilliant innovations that follow are taking place regularly at the Technion.
By thinking small, mankind is gaining a newfound ability to initiate and control how complex structures are built or build themselves from individual molecules, the fundamental building blocks of nature.
At the Forefront
From the early days of nanotechnology, Technion scientists were among the first to see its potential across a wide range of disciplines including electronics, optics and biotechnology. And bringing it all together is the Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.
A $26 million gift from the New Jersey-based Russell Berrie Foundation, matched by the Israeli government, was part of an $88 million commitment that in 2005 enabled the Technion to launch the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI).
Today the institute continues to expand, with new state-of-the-art facilities such as the Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center and the new Electron Microscopy Center. Cutting-edge resources include the Titan 80-300 transmission electron microscope and the Dual Beam Focused Ion Beam (FIB) microscopes, as well as other facilities that put the Technion at the forefront of global nanotechnology research and development. The same facilities serve researchers from other universities in Israel as well as industry, boosting Israeli research and development into uncharted territories.
RBNI has quickly become one of the world’s most dynamic centers for this research, and a global gateway to the “nanoindustries” of the future. It represents the largest academic program in the history of the Technion, sweeping across campus in a multidisciplinary wave with more than 100 faculty members and 300 graduate students, top minds recruited from the world over. It is also a hub for international nanotechnology conferences and seminars.
“Today’s question,” says Prof. Sivan, “is not whether to go nano, but how to ensure that we are among the nano leaders of the next century.”
Israeli President Shimon Peres himself remarked that for Israel to keep its technological advantage, “we can and must do this through nanotechnology.” But with the Technion among a handful of the world’s leading nanoresearch centers, the entire world stands to gain from the work done here.
Why Go Nano?
When Technion scientists recently wrote out the entire Old Testament on the head of a pin, the idea was not to eventually make your Sunday New York Times easier to lug home from the newsstand. It was to dramatically illustrate how information can now be stored -- and structures created -- on a scale once thought to be impossibly tiny.
 Vials of nanotechnology materials
Nanotechnology is often misunderstood as solely shrinking things down, but its greatest promise in fact is held by building things up, using materials at the molecular level to make all kinds of things better, stronger, faster. Your cell phone might someday include a self-assembling nano chip able to hold every bit of data from every library on earth (not to mention GPS, the internet and every album from Pink Floyd to Perry Como). <
Why is nanotechnology being seen as "the next industrial revolution?" Like electricity or computers before it, nanotechnology will offer greatly improved efficiency in almost every facet of life. It will mean better-built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer and smarter products - for the home, for communications, for medicine, transportation, agriculture and industry. And it will offer not just better products, but a vastly improved manufacturing process using totally new engineering concepts.
Major Breakthroughs
By learning how to build things the way nature does atom by atom, molecule by molecule Technion researchers are developing amazing new substances and vastly improving current applications in all walks of science.
Education The multidisciplinary nature of nanotechnology requires unprecedented integration of physics, chemistry, engineering, and life sciences which are traditionally taught in separate faculties. This barrier has been removed in 2005 with the establishment of the Norman Seiden Multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. The outstanding students admitted to this exclusive program take courses in all the above faculties and carry out multidisciplinary research, typically guided by advisors from two different faculties.
Life sciences, optics, materials and electronics are the four key specialties where the Technion has committed its nanotechnology focus. And the results have been exciting:
A Slender Thread: The first Technion nanotechnology project to draw headlines came in 1998, when Professors Uri Sivan, Erez Braun and Yoav Eichen assembled DNA and silver into a conductive wire 1000 times thinner than a human hair, opening the door for faster and more sophisticated computer chips. That’s right, living DNA molecules being used to create a new generation of electronics.
Carbon Conquest: Technion researchers then went on to create a self-assembling nanotransistor from DNA. This was another crucial advance in electronics, because as scientists reach the limits of working with silicon, carbon nanotubes are widely recognized as the next step in squeezing an increasing number of transistors onto a chip, vastly increasing computer speed and memory. And the self-assembling ability of these nanocircuits is what will enable large-scale manufacturing.
 Electrospun Nano fibers could be used
to build stronger and lighter textiles.
Amazing Apparel: But even low-tech items like the clothes we wear could see nano-improvements. Mechanical Engineering professors studying increasingly tiny nylon nanofibers found a sudden increase in strength at a diameter of about 500 nanometers just one-hundredth the width of a human hair. This could point the way to clothing and protective equipment that is stronger yet lighter and more comfortable. Possibly even run-free pantyhose?
To Serve and Protect: Technion alumni have made headlines by using nanotech to design one of the world’s most shock-resistant protective coatings five times the strength of steel - to protect troops and vehicles on the battlefield.
Waste Not: Nanomaterials can also protect national security and the environment by helping natural resources go further. Infinitesimally tiny particles, for instance, have led to a new generation of wastewater-purification systems.
Also on the drawing boards at the Technion’s RBNI:
Vibrating carbon nanotubes, or amazingly tiny parachutes made of electrospun nanofibers, both designed to detect airborne chemical toxins and other environmental contaminants. (Imagine a sensor tiny enough to tuck in a baseball cap, but sensitive enough to warn an asthmatic of dangerously high pollution levels).
Nanofood substances or nutraceutical drinks that could deliver biologically active chemicals right to the intestines or other organs.
An “electronic nose,” or artificial olfactory system, that could detect and analyze cancer by evaluating a patient’s breath sample.
Biomedical “scaffolding” materials that spur the repair and regrowth of damaged tissues in the cardiovascular or central nervous systems.
Drug delivery systems that will escort chemotherapy or other treatments directly to afflicted cells, leaving healthy cells unscathed. Microspheres could reach previously inaccessible brain tumors, for example, delivering months of timed-release chemo.
In fact, with a leading medical school right on campus, the Technion is especially well equipped to leverage the vast new world of nanomedical advances. Better MRIs. Amazing new enzymes. Special lubricants to heal joints and fight arthritis. They’re all on the drawing board at RBNI.
Who’s Who In Nano
More than 100 faculty members from disciplines across campus are taking part in nanoresearch; a full list, with areas of interest, is available in the RBNI NanoReview ’08, or at rbni.technion.ac.il. Here’s an introduction to just a few of the key players:
RBNI’s Director is physics Professor Uri Sivan has been personally involved in several of the Technion’s trail-blazing nanotechnology research projects and is a leading expert on the interface between nanotech and molecular biology. Along with the milestone project on conductive wiring and self-assembled transistor, he has been working on gaining electrical control over bioprocesses.
Professor Moti Segev won the 2007 European Physical Society Quantum Electronics Prize, a top international award in the field, for pioneering work that sheds new light on the properties and possibilities of light.
Dr. Dganit Danino
Dr. Shulamit Levenberg of the Biomedical Engineering faculty has been named a "Technological Leader” by Scientific American magazine for her breakthrough research in tissue creation and regeneration.
Dr. Dror Seliktar of the Biomedical Engineering faculty is leading a special steering committee on projects that apply nanotech know-how to tissue engineering, a top Technion research priority.
Prof. Efrat Lifshitz of the Chemistry faculty is developing procedures to create new types of semiconducting nanocrystals that aid in optoelectronic applications.
Dr. Kinneret Keren of the Physics faculty is studying the biophysics of cell motility, the ability of cells to move spontaneously and independently. She is a recipient of the “100 Top Young Innovators” honor from Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of innovation.
Dr. Hossam Haick, a senior lecturer in the Technion Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, has been named by M.I.T.’s Technology Review as one of the world’s 35 top young scientists under age 35. Already the recipient of several prestigious awards and grants, Dr. Haick has garnered broad international recognition for leading the development of an “electronic nose” device consisting of nano-sized sensors that can detect cancer in a person’s breath, which could greatly improve survival rates through early diagnosis.
Prof. Yeshayahu (Ishi) Talmon of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and an RBNI Nanotechnology Faculty member is the head of the Technion project on Complex Fluids, Microstructure and Macromolecules. His research focuses on nanostructure in complex fluids and the applications of electron microscopy.
“Nanotechnology is not technology made smaller. It is a whole new concept leading to a new type of engineering and eventually to bridging the gap between manmade technology and the animate world,” explains Prof. Sivan.
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