Volume 1, Issue 6
Dean's Message
Mark Richards
Dean, Physical Sciences
November 2004
Dear Friends,
Those of us who like to design and build stuff, whether in the lab or in our garage, usually relish the ritual trip to the hardware store or supply room to select the nuts, bolts, screws, wires, motors, switches, and other widgets that enable our schemes to be realized in short order. In our macro-scale world, we take for granted the familiar and standardized parts that make up our toasters, air conditioners, and automobiles.
But did you ever wonder what might be on the shelves of hardware stores in the future, once the promise of nanoscience and nanoengineering is realized? "I'll take three rolls of your 14-nanometer gauge semiconducting wire, a handful of frictionless nanotube bearings, one of those fancy new quantum-positioning motors, and throw in a few buckyballs for the kids." Sound far-fetched? Not to the enterprising group of Berkeley scientists and engineers who were just awarded an $11.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish our visionary Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems (COINS).
Directed by Physics professor Alex Zettl, COINS aims to merge a host of Tinkertoy-like nanopieces with organic molecules - DNA, proteins, and nanomolecular motors - to create sensors and nanomachines small enough to fit on the back of a virus. Each nanoscale building block ranges from a few to hundreds of nanometers across. And remember, a nanometer is just one billionth of a meter, or about one thousandth the width of a human hair. Nanotechnology exploits the unusual and powerful properties that emerge at such small length scales.
The impetus for this new center is the flood of new nanoscale devices--from nanomotors to nanotransistors and developed by Berkeley and other nanoscience laboratories around the world. What distinguishes COINS, however, is that this group aims to lead the world in nano-assembly, piecing together these dazzling new nano-building blocks to make even more dazzling nano-machines that may revolutionize everything from energy conversion to drug delivery to the clothes we wear.
The COINS group consists of 28 researchers from UC Berkeley, UC Merced, Stanford, and Caltech, and includes not only engineers, physicists, chemists, and biologists, but an economist. COINS is a coup for Berkeley's new Nanosciences and Nanoengineering Institute (http://nano.berkeley.edu), itself a product of the campus' recent strategic initiatives process.
So when your daughter is tinkering with the idea of building her first nanobot, bring her to Berkeley. In the mean time, take a look at Professor Zettl's website to glimpse some of the nano-widgets of the future (http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/highlights.html). His work and the efforts of many COINS researchers will be featured in future issues of ScienceMatters@Berkeley.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Richards
Professor of Earth and Planetary Science
Dean, Division of Physical Sciences
College of Letters and Science
UC Berkeley
Mark_Richards@ls.berkeley.edu