The Nano Age?
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Letter from the President
The Nano Age? Simon Sze famously announced that the end of the Iron Age and the beginning of the Silicon Age was in 1968, when the scientific community published more papers on silicon than on steel. In 2004, papers on nano outran publications on silicon by 2:1. Have we taken leave of the Silicon Age already? Or have we taken leave of our senses? As scientists, we generally tend to work on topics that we think will have a high impact on scientific progress. For materials researchers, this means that there is usually a strong correlation between the number of papers and economic activity. For a few representative materials, Table I shows how 2004 publications in a given area track the size of that industry (worldwide revenue in billions of dollars per year). Interestingly, the correlation to 2004 revenues is pretty weak, but the correlation to projected future revenues (2010) is much closer. Our scientific activity appears to focus on the problems we guess will be important in the future (further exemplified by the $1 million Dan David Prize, which recognizes the impact of the materials science field on the future of society; see Research/Researchers in this issue). By any measure, “nano” stands out as an unusual topic in materials science.
Figure 1 shows a graph of the annual publications (by title) in a variety of topics over the last few decades. Publications with “nano” in the title ran at about 500/year (references to wavelength only), then took off in 1991, shot past silicon in 2000, and doubled those on silicon today, with no sign that the exponential rate is ending. This suggests the end of the Silicon Age and the start of the Nano Age in
Table I: Correlation of Publications to Economic Activity. Topic
2004 Papers
Silicon III-V Steel Nitrides Nano
14,185 1300 5354 1200 30,828
2004 Revenue
2004 Ratio
($ Billions)
(paper/$1B revenue)
160 13 205 2.5 ?
88.7 100.0 26.1 480.0 ?
Growth 10% 17% 3% 47% ?
MRS Bulletin
2010 Revenue
2010 Ratio
($ Billions)
(paper/$1B revenue)
290 33 245 25 ?
49 39 22 48 ?
2000. But when Sze proclaimed the Silicon Age, there was already a very substantial industry in the field. Silicon was infiltrating every imaginable device and radically changing whole areas of human existence. The transistor radio had redefined entertainment, and compact computation had enabled us to reach the moon. Revenues were only ~$10 billion worldwide, but they were booming, and the writing was already on the wall for the next tenfold increase in growth. Is nano anywhere near? Popular articles on nanotechnology typically point out that there are current nanotechnology products as well as future promise. These products include sunscreens and stain-resistant pants, tennis balls, and ski waxes. This list, while it hints at an extraordinary breadth of capabilities, does not instantly suggest a worldwide industry that dwarfs the semiconductor and steel industries. However, nano is not just a single material, class of material, or processing technique. It is rightly criti
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