The long view of nanotechnology development: the National Nanotechnology Initiative at 10 years

A global scientific and societal endeavor was set in motion by the nanotechnology vision formulated in 1999 that inspired the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and other national and international R&D programs. Establishing foundational knowledge at the nanoscale has been the main focus of the nanotechnology research community in the first decade. As of 2009, this new knowledge underpinned about a quarter of a trillion dollars worldwide market, of which about $91 billion was in US products that incorporate nanoscale components. Nanotechnology is already evolving toward becoming a general-purpose technology by 2020, encompassing four generations of products with increasing structural and dynamic complexity: (1) passive nanostructures, (2) active nanostructures, (3) nanosystems, and (4) molecular nanosystems. By 2020, the increasing integration of nanoscale science and engineering knowledge and of nanosystems promises mass applications of nanotechnology in industry, medicine, and computing, and in better comprehension and conservation of nature. Nanotechnology’s rapid development worldwide is a testimony to the transformative power of identifying a concept or trend and laying out a vision at the synergistic confluence of diverse scientific research areas. This chapter provides a brief perspective on the development of the NNI since 2000 in the international context, the main outcomes of the R&D programs after 10 years, the governance aspects specific to this emerging field, lessons learned, and most importantly, how the nanotechnology community should prepare for the future.     

Broader Societal Issues of Nanotechnology

Nanoscale science and engineering are providing unprecedented understanding and control over the basic building blocks of matter, leading to increased coherence in knowledge, technology, and education. The main reason for developing nanotechnology is to advance broad societal goals such as improved comprehension of nature, increased productivity, better healthcare, and extending the limits of sustainable development and of human potential. This paper outlines societal implication activities in nanotechnology R&D programs. The US National Nanotechnology Initiative annual investment in research with educational and societal implications is estimated at about $30 million (of which National Science Foundation (NSF) awards about $23 million including contributions to student fellowships), and in nanoscale research with relevance to environment at about $50 million (of which NSF awards about $30 million and EPA about $6 million). An appeal is made to researchers and funding organizations worldwide to take timely and responsible advantage of the new technology for economic and sustainable development, to initiate societal implications studies from the beginning of the nanotechnology programs, and to communicate effectively the goals and potential risks with research users and the public.     

International Perspective on Government Nanotechnology Funding in 2005

The worldwide investment in nanotechnology research and development (R&D) reported by national government organizations and EC has increased approximately 9-fold in the last 8 years – from $432 million in 1997 to about $4,100 million in 2005. The proportion of national government investments for: academic R&D and education are between 20% (Korea, Taiwan) and 65% (US), industrial R&D – between 5% (US) and 60% (Korea, Taiwan), and core facilities and government laboratories – about 20–25% in all major contributing economies. This evaluation uses the NNI definition of nanotechnology (that excludes MEMS or microelectronics), and is based on direct information and analysis with managers of nanotechnology R&D programs in the respective countries.     

Assemblies of silicate sol–gel matrix encapsulated core/shell Au/Ag nanoparticles: interparticles surface plasmon coupling

Korea has become one of the leading countries in nanotechnology along with the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Since 2001, the Korean Government established the ??Nanotechnology Development Plan.?? Since then, the trend in nanotechnology is steadily changing from fundamental research to application-driven technologies. In this paper, we examine the nanotechnology development and policy during the past decade, which includes the investments in R&D, infrastructure, and education. The Third Phase (2011?C2020) on clean nanotechnology convergence and integration in information, energy, and the environmental sector is also given. Furthermore, the program on long-term strategy dealing with sustainability in resolving future societal demand and plans for sustainable energy and environmental activities will be discussed in depth. The outcomes and national evaluations of research and education are also given.     

Nanotechnology R&;D Policy of Japan and Nanotechnology Support Project

In the 2nd Science and Technology Basic Plan (2001–2005), the area of nanotechnology and materials is designated one of the four prioritized areas in funding. Following this plan, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industries (METI), the main funding ministries, and their organizations, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), RIKEN, New Energy and Industrial Technology Organization (NEDO), and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) promotes their research programs. Besides, in order to promote interdisciplinary, interorganizational, and international collaboration of researchers, Nanotechnology Support Project (NSP) was started by MEXT in 2002. The project has two missions: informational support and common use facility support. Nanotechnology Researchers Network Center of Japan is responsible for informational support, and 14 universities and national research institutes are responsible for common use facility support.     

Connecting NSF funding to patent innovation in nanotechnology (2001–2004)

Nanotechnology research has experienced growth rapid in knowledge and innovations; it also attracted significant public funding in recent years. Several countries have recognized nanotechnology as a critical research domain that promises to revolutionize a wide range of fields of applications. In this paper, we present an analysis of the funding for nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its implications on technological innovation (number of patents) in this field from 2001 to 2004. Using a combination of basic bibliometric analysis and content visualization tools, we identify growth trends, research topic distribution, and the evolution in NSF funding and commercial patenting activities recorded at the United States Patent Office (USPTO). The patent citations are used to compare the impact of the NSF-funded research on nanotechnology development with research supported by other sources in the United States and abroad. The analysis shows that the NSF-funded researchers and patents authored by them have significantly higher impact based on patent citation measures in the four-year period than other comparison groups. The NSF-authored patent impact is growing faster with the lifetime of a patent, indicating the long-term importance of fundamental research.     

The Grand Challenges of Nanotechnology

Amazing breakthroughs and advances continue to be made in nanoscale science and engineering and the rapidly emerging field of nanotechnology, including near-commercial applications in biomedicine, computing and environmental protection. The National Nanotechnology Initiative, begun by the Clinton Administration has placed nanoscale research on a new funding trajectory. But, many grand challenges must be overcome, technical ones as well as those related to funding, science and technology workforce, and the need for stronger collaboration across discipline, organizations, government agencies and with other countries.     

From Vision to the Implementation of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative

All natural and living systems are governed by atomic and molecular behavior at the nanoscale. Research is now seeking systematic approaches to create revolutionary new products and technologies by control of matter at the same scale. Fundamental discoveries and potential implications of nanotechnology to wealth, health and peace have captured the imagination of scientists, industry and government experts. The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has become a top national priority in science and technology in U.S. for fiscal year 2001, with a Federal nanotechnology investment portfolio of $422 million. Nanotechnology is expected to have a profound impact on our economy and society in the earlier 21st century.The vision, research and development strategy, and timeline of NNI are presented by using several recent scientific discoveries and results from industry.     

Worldwide nanotechnology development: a comparative study of USPTO,EPO, and JPO patents (1976–2004)

To assess worldwide development of nanotechnology, this paper compares the numbers and contents of nanotechnology patents in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO). It uses the patent databases as indicators of nanotechnology trends via bibliographic analysis, content map analysis, and citation network analysis on nanotechnology patents per country, institution, and technology field. The numbers of nanotechnology patents published in USPTO and EPO have continued to increase quasi-exponentially since 1980, while those published in JPO stabilized after 1993. Institutions and individuals located in the same region as a repository’s patent office have a higher contribution to the nanotechnology patent publication in that repository (“home advantage” effect). The USPTO and EPO databases had similar high-productivity contributing countries and technology fields with large number of patents, but quite different high-impact countries and technology fields after the average number of received cites. Bibliographic analysis on USPTO and EPO patents shows that researchers in the United States and Japan published larger numbers of patents than other countries, and that their patents were more frequently cited by other patents. Nanotechnology patents covered physics research topics in all three repositories. In addition, USPTO showed the broadest representation in coverage in biomedical and electronics areas. The analysis of citations by technology field indicates that USPTO had a clear pattern of knowledge diffusion from highly cited fields to less cited fields, while EPO showed knowledge exchange mainly occurred among highly cited fields.     

Longitudinal Nanotechnology Development (1991--2002): National Science Foundation Funding and its Impact on Patents

Nanotechnology holds the promise to revolutionize a wide range of products, processes and applications. It is recognized by over sixty countries as critical for their development at the beginning of the 21st century. A significant public investment of over $1 billion annually is devoted to nanotechnology research in the United States. This paper provides an analysis of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funding of nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) and its relationship to the innovation as reflected in the United States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) patent data. Using a combination of bibliometric analysis and visualization tools, we have identified several general trends, the key players, and the evolution of technology topics in the NSF funding and commercial patenting activities. This study documents the rapid growth of innovation in the field of nanotechnology and its correlation to funding. Statistical analysis shows that the NSF-funded researchers and their patents have higher impact factors than other private and publicly funded reference groups. This suggests the importance of fundamental research on nanotechnology development. The number of cites per NSF-funded inventor is about 10 as compared to 2 for all inventors of NSE-related patents recorded at USPTO, and the corresponding Authority Score is 20 as compared to 1.8.     

Nanotechnology in the Chemical Industry – Opportunities and Challenges

The traditional chemical industry has become a largely mature industry with many commodity products based on established technologies. Therefore, new product and market opportunities will more likely come from speciality chemicals, and from new functionalities obtained from new processing technologies as well as new microstructure control methodologies. It is a well-known fact that in addition to its molecular structure, the microstructure of a material is key to determining its properties. Controlling structures at the micro- and nano-levels is therefore essential to new discoveries. For this article, we define nanotechnology as the controlled manipulation of nanomaterials with at least one dimension less than 100nm. Nanotechnology is emerging as one of the principal areas of investigation that is integrating chemistry and materials science, and in some cases integrating these with biology to create new and yet undiscovered properties that can be exploited to gain new market opportunities. In this article market opportunities for nanotechnology will be presented from an industrial perspective covering electronic, biomedical, performance materials, and consumer products. Manufacturing technology challenges will be identified, including operations ranging from particle formation, coating, dispersion, to characterization, modeling, and simulation. Finally, a nanotechnology innovation roadmap is proposed wherein the interplay between the development of nanoscale building blocks, product design, process design, and value chain integration is identified. A suggestion is made for an R&D model combining market pull and technology push as a way to quickly exploit the advantages in nanotechnology and translate these into customer benefits.     

Research output in nanoscience and nanotechnology: Pakistan scenario

In this article, we present an overview of the research activity undertaken in Pakistan in the field of nanoscience and technology for the period 2001–2010. Starting with almost insignificant publications in this field in 2001, the number has risen steadily to 430 in 2010. A break up of organizations actively involved in research in this field suggests that most of these publications have emanated from universities. The contribution of R&D organizations that far outnumber the universities is about 10 percent of the total. Reasons for the increasing trend in publications, especially in the universities are discussed.     

International nanotechnology development in 2003: Country,institution, and technology field analysis based on USPTO patent database

Nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) have seen rapid growth and expansion in new areas in recent years. This paper provides an international patent analysis using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) data searched by keywords of the entire text: title, abstract, claims, and specifications. A fraction of these patents fully satisfy the National Nanotechnology Initiative definition of nanotechnology (which requires exploiting specific phenomena and direct manipulation at the nanoscale), while others only make use of NSE tools and methods of investigation. In previous work we proposed an integrated patent analysis and visualization framework of patent content mapping for the NSE field and of knowledge flow pattern identification until 2002. In this paper, the results are updated for 2003, and the new trends are presented.     

Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Romania

In spite of difficult working conditions and with very low financial support, many groups from Romania are involved in emerging fields, such as the nanoscale science and technology. Until the last years, this activity was developed without a central coordination and without many interactions between these research groups. In the year 2000, some of the institutes and universities active in the nanotechnology field in Romania founded the MICRONANOTECH network. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the main activities and results of the Romanian groups working in this novel domain. Most of the groups are deal with the nanomaterial technology and only few of them have activities in nanostructure science and engineering, in new concepts and device modeling and technology. This paper describes the nanotechnology research development in two of the most significant institutes from Romania: Centre for Nanotechnologies from National Institute for Research and Development in Microtehnologies (IMT-Bucharest) and from National Institute for Research and Development in Materials Physics (INCD-FM), Magurele. The Romanian research results in nanotechnology field were presented in numerous papers presented in international conferences or published in national and international journals. They are also presented in patents, international awards and fellowships. The research effort and financial support are outlined. Some future trends of the Romanian nanoscale science and technology research are also described.     

How can nanobiotechnology oversight advance science and industry: examples from environmental,health, and safety studies of nanoparticles (nano-EHS)

Nanotechnology has great potential to transform science and industry in the fields of energy, material, environment, and medicine. At the same time, more concerns are being raised about the occupational health and safety of nanomaterials in the workplace and the implications of nanotechnology on the environment and living systems. Studies on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) issues of nanomaterials have a strong influence on public acceptance of nanotechnology and, eventually, affect its sustainability. Oversight and regulation by government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play significant roles in ensuring responsible and environmentally friendly development of nanotechnology. The EHS studies of nanomaterials can provide data and information to help the development of regulations and guidelines. We present research results on three aspects of EHS studies: physico-chemical characterization and measurement of nanomaterials; emission, exposure, and toxicity of nanomaterials; and control and abatement of nanomaterial releases using filtration technology. Measurement of nanoparticle agglomerates using a newly developed instrument, the Universal NanoParticle Analyzer (UNPA), is discussed. Exposure measurement results for silicon nanoparticles in a pilot scale production plant are presented, as well as exposure measurement and toxicity study of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Filtration studies of nanoparticle agglomerates are also presented as an example of emission control methods.     

Trends in worldwide nanotechnology patent applications: 1991 to 2008

Nanotechnology patent applications published during 1991–2008 have been examined using the “title–abstract” keyword search on esp@cenet “worldwide” database. The longitudinal evolution of the number of patent applications, their topics, and their respective patent families have been evaluated for 15 national patent offices covering 98% of the total global activity. The patent offices of the United States (USA), People’s Republic of China (PRC), Japan, and South Korea have published the largest number of nanotechnology patent applications, and experienced significant but different growth rates after 2000. In most repositories, the largest numbers of nanotechnology patent applications originated from their own countries/regions, indicating a significant “home advantage.” The top applicant institutions are from different sectors in different countries (e.g., from industry in the US and Canada patent offices, and from academe or government agencies at the PRC office). As compared to 2000, the year before the establishment of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), numerous new invention topics appeared in 2008, in all 15 patent repositories. This is more pronounced in the USA and PRC. Patent families have increased among the 15 patent offices, particularly after 2005. Overlapping patent applications increased from none in 1991 to about 4% in 2000 and to about 27% in 2008. The largest share of equivalent nanotechnology patent applications (1,258) between two repositories was identified between the US and Japan patent offices.     

The effect of activity-based nanoscience and nanotechnology education on pre-service science teachers’ conceptual understanding

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of activity-based nanoscience and nanotechnology education (ABNNE) on pre-service science teachers’ (PST’) conceptual understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Within this context, the study was conducted according to mixed methods research with the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants were 32 PST who were determined by using criterion sampling that is one of the purposive sampling methods. ABNNE was carried out during 7 weeks as 2 h per week in special issues at physics course. Design and implementation of ABNNE were based on “Big Ideas” which was found in literature and provided guidance for teaching nanoscience and nanotechnology. All activities implemented during ABNNE were selected from literature. “Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Concept Test (NN-CT)” and “Activity-Based Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Education Assessment Form (ABNNE-AF)” were used as data collection tools in research. Findings obtained with data collection tools were discussed with coverage of literature. The findings revealed that PST conceptual understanding developed following ABNNE. Various suggestions for increasing PST conceptual understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology were presented according to the results of the study.     

Developing nanotechnology in Latin America

This article investigates the development of nanotechnology in Latin America with a particular focus on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Based on data for nanotechnology research publications and patents and suggesting a framework for analyzing the development of R&D networks, we identify three potential strategies of nanotechnology research collaboration. Then, we seek to identify the balance of emphasis upon each of the three strategies by mapping the current research profile of those four countries. In general, we find that they are implementing policies and programs to develop nanotechnologies but differ in their collaboration strategies, institutional involvement, and level of development. On the other hand, we find that they coincide in having a modest industry participation in research and a low level of commercialization of nanotechnologies.

Measurement uncertainties of size, shape, and surface measurements using transmission electron microscopy of near-monodisperse, near-spherical nanoparticles

Carbon nanotubes are currently one of the most important materials due to their strong mechanical resistance, light weight, and transport properties. Since the publication of Ijima’s paper on tubular carbon structures (Iijima, Nature 354:56–58, 1991), approximately 80,000 research articles have been published according to the ISI web of science (WOS) database, using “carbon nanotube*” as the search criterion in the search by topic option. In this work, the development and impact of nanoscience and nanotechnology (N&N) and carbon nanotubes on several research areas, journals, specific papers, and emerging research areas are analyzed and discussed. Considering the production of papers in these areas from 1997 to 2012, quantitatively speaking, the People’s Republic of China is emerging as the leading country in N&N and carbon nanotube research, passing the United States of America. WOS data analysis of nanoscience, nanotechnology, and carbon nanotube research in developed and developing countries is discussed, and some ideas for accelerating the progress in these important research areas are proposed.     

A longitudinal analysis of nanotechnology literature: 1976–2004

Nanotechnology research and applications have experienced rapid growth in recent years. We assessed the status of nanotechnology research worldwide by applying bibliographic, content map, and citation network analysis to a data set of about 200,000 nanotechnology papers published in the Thomson Science Citation Index Expanded database (SCI) from 1976 to 2004. This longitudinal study shows a quasi-exponential growth of nanotechnology articles with an average annual growth rate of 20.7% after 1991. The United States had the largest contribution of nanotechnology research and China and Korea had the fastest growth rates. The largest institutional contributions were from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The high-impact papers generally described tools, theories, technologies, perspectives, and overviews of nanotechnology. From the top 20 institutions, based on the average number of paper citations in 1976–2004, 17 were in the Unites States, 2 in France and 1 in Germany. Content map analysis identified the evolution of the major topics researched from 1976 to 2004, including investigative tools, physical phenomena, and experiment environments. Both the country citation network and the institution citation network had relatively high clustering, indicating the existence of citation communities in the two networks, and specific patterns in forming citation communities. The United States, Germany, Japan, and China were major citation centers in nanotechnology research with close inter-citation relationships.