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October 12, 2006

Nano facility opens

Visitors recently got a firsthand view of Pitt’s big investment into very small technology.

The Sept. 29 opening of Pitt’s Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering (PINSE) NanoScale Fabrication and Characterization Facility was heralded with an afternoon-long nanoscience symposium, followed by the first public peek at the $6.1 million facility.

More than 200 people gathered in the lobby of Benedum Hall for the formal opening ceremonies before heading to the sub-basement, where some donned paper suits and booties to tour the facility’s “clean room” for a close-up look at the center’s new etching, wafer processing and lithography equipment. The 4,000-sq.-ft. facility allows researchers to study and manipulate very small amounts of material at the atomic level. Four dozen researchers from a variety of disciplines are associated with the center.

Pitt’s Institute of NanoScience and Engineering, established in 2002, took on the Petersen name earlier this year following a $5 million gift from alumnus John M. Petersen and his wife, Gertrude. The University’s microscale and nanoscale research recently was ranked second in the U.S. by trade publication Small Times.

The Petersens’ gift, said Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, “positions Pitt to be an international leader in the nanotechnology field and was a major factor in the recognition we have received — not only from Small Times, but from our colleagues and peers across the country and throughout the world — as a leader in this emerging, extraordinarily significant field.”

Pitt’s research is focused on science at the “essentially nano” level of less than 10 nanometers. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, or about 10 atoms long, explained Senior Vice Chancellor and Provost James V. Maher at the facility opening. Maher, whose background is in physics, noted that much is unknown about the behavior of such small samples since most of the atoms are near the surface. “There’s really exciting science to be learned,” he said noting that the University is concentrating its efforts on materials of 1-30 nanometers.

Learning how to control and use such small samples can lead to breakthroughs in very small, very fast computers or sensors and other technologies, Maher said. Four nano-oriented intellectual property discoveries already have been licensed from research at the center, Maher said, adding that the University’s investment in pursuing nanoscience is expected to pay off by delivering research that improves the human condition and increases understanding of nanomaterials.

Symposium keynote speaker Mihail Roco, the National Science Foundation’s senior adviser for nanotechnology, noted that federal expenditure in nanotechnology research has grown from $116 million in fiscal 1997 to $1.2 billion in 2005.

He commended Pitt’s efforts in nanoscale research, saying the new facility would not only bring together researchers from multiple disciplines but would provide visibility for the University as a regional center in the rapidly growing field.

Understanding nanoscience concepts is important because “it’s where the first-level organization of living systems takes place,” Roco said. “Nanoscience and engineering creates a kind of platform.”

Nanotechnology has broad implications in industry, medicine and education, he said. Since the field began garnering attention in the 1990s, the technology has moved rapidly from passive structures such as coatings to active nanostructures such as targeted drugs in about 2000. In 2005, systems using atomic-level guided assembly of molecules came to the fore and Roco predicted that by 2010 a fourth generation will emerge: atomic-level design. “Eventually components will shrink to molecular nanosystems,” he said.

Industry estimates predict that by 2015, 50 percent of new products in high-tech areas will involve nanotechnology and the international market for nanocomponents will reach $1 billion.

Some 400 consumer products incorporate nanotechnology today, he said. “You can buy a container containing silver nanoparticles which will kill bacteria in foods and so you keep the food longer.”

Potential medical applications include nanostructured polymer wires that can be guided along neurons to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s, and biomaterials for human repair including artificial joints and ligaments, non-invasive diagnostics, localized drug delivery, scaffolding for artificial organs or mesh that can be used to build blood vessels.

A recent application of self-assembling molecules is in wound repair. “There are now two or three self-assembling materials that can fill a wound in a few minutes,” Roco said.

Cancer treatments that spring from the ability to examine processes within the cell could be a reality by 2015, he said, predicting suffering and death from the disease could be eliminated.

—Kimberly K. Barlow

Filed under: Feature,Volume 39 Issue 4

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