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Nanotechnology is at the heart of a great number of breakthroughs that will power the future economy. Materials that will be manufactured using atomically precise technologies will offer performance and prices far superior to conventional materials. For example, the state of the art in semiconductor technology is photolithographic manufacturing. Photolithography uses light to remove material on a chip wafer, layer by layer. It has been done that way for decades even as the chip density has increased and chip size has decreased. One of the leading manufactures of capital equipment for the semiconductor industry is playing a big part in photolithographic manufacturing. The technology improvements have enabled them to pile an increasing number of components on semiconductor “real estate.” Right now, advanced photolithography qualifies as nanotechnology, however there are theoretical size limits being approached. This is because light is used to “cut” the electrical pathways and components on the chip. This gets harder to do if the features that are requested are smaller than the wavelength of light being used to do the job. As an example, you don’t shave with a chain saw. New technologies are being developed that don’t rely on etching or otherwise removing unwanted materials. Increasingly, they will rely on the self-assembling capacities of carefully engineered molecules. For example, MIT researchers have recently developed a molecular manufacturing technique that facilitates the adoption of electron beams in chip manufacturing. Beams of electrons can be far more narrowly focused than beams of light. This allows smaller chip features and more powerful, compact electronics. This same progression is evident in scientific instruments. In the late 1500s, optical microscopes began the quest to see smaller and smaller objects. Eventually, the limits of optical resolution were reached; for the same reasons, we are hitting the limits of light-based lithography. During the Great Depression, electrical engineers developed methods for using electrons to view very small objects. The scanning electron microscope became one of the most transformational scientific instruments of the 20th century. The insights it provided revolutionized many fields from biology and medicine to materials sciences. However, in photolithographic chip fabrication, light has one advantage over electrons. An entire layer can be etched by simply exposing the layer to a project image with the desired pattern. This isn’t much different than old-school darkroom photography. You expose photosensitive paper to an image pattern projected through the negative. After developing the picture, you have an entire image. Electron beams require that patterns be drawn one line at a time; like the Etch A Sketch we had as kids. Electron beam lithography allows higher resolution but it is much slower. This is where the MIT researchers brought molecular self-assembly into the picture. They created a technique using electron beams to etch nano-sized posts on semiconductor wafers. They then exposed them to polymers that attach to the posts and spontaneously self-arrange into predictable but not particularly useful patterns. To get useful patterns, some of the polymers were fabricated using silicon. After self-assembly, an electrically charged gas burned away the non-silicon polymers. Only the silicon polymers, in the desired pattern, remained. Since the polymers can repel and attract each other in different ways, and since the individual links in a polymer chain can be tailored to fit an application, the patterns can be manipulated. The shapes that are formed can also be controlled by varying the spacing and number of posts created by the electron beam. To date, the researchers have been able to create seven different shapes. As this breakthrough technology becomes more workable, it will increase the speed at which chips can be manufactured. Products using these chips will experience a short product development lifecycle and will come to market faster. I trust this post has provided some background and evidence that powerful efforts are underway with breakthrough technology for precise manufacturing. These activities will soon provide alternative wealth creating opportunities and our economy will become significantly stronger. In closing, I favor a quote from Steve Forbes. Forbes says that pursuing additional financial education and the resulting increase in our financial literacy (including the investment potential of breakthrough technology) will open our eyes to alternative wealth creating strategies and this will be the key to resolving our global financial crisis. To gain the necessary financial education, it is best to obtain association with, access to, and membership in a wealth creation community. As a result, you will learn and have the knowledge to use alternative wealth creating strategies such as Bank on Yourself, debt reduction, and asset protection. You will be exposed to wealth acceleration investments in areas (discussed in this and previous blog posts) such as atomically precise manufacturing, nuclear power generation, commercial space ventures, Carrier Ethernet technologies, nanotech lithography, robotics, nano-based next-generation battery technology, precious metals, water rights, oil, natural gas, potash mines, food commodities, and gold mines. You will have the knowledge to consider investments in assets that are inherently useful like oil rigs, hydropower, or methanol plants; things that are hard to build, difficult to replace, and costly to substitute; definitely not financial stocks, definitely not retail stocks, definitely not commercial property. Another benefit of membership in a wealth creation community is exposure to entrepreneurial leadership and business opportunities. Many of these leaders suggest that if you don’t focus on being a digital entrepreneur, being self-employed, or being a small business owner, it will be a very tough road in the months and years ahead; actually it will be an uphill battle. As a result, the innovative wealth creation communities provide education and training on B2B, and B2C, eCommerce enabling a new breed of professionals that are creating six figure second incomes. It is wise to monitor breakthrough technology as there are truly exciting developments afoot in the field of nanotechnology for precise manufacturing and related business activities. I will continue to monitor developments and provide updates in future articles and at my blog. Finally, I want to thank Patrick Cox of Agora Financial as he was the source of some of the materials about the technology advancements mentioned in this post.
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