History of nanotechnology

The first use of the concepts in 'nano-technology' (but predating use of that name) was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction would become more important, etc. This basic idea appears plausible, and exponential assembly enhances it with parallelism to produce a useful quantity of end products. The term "nanotechnology" was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper as follows: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule." In the 1980s the basic idea of this definition was explored in much more depth by Dr. K. Eric Drexler, who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and the books Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (1986) and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation and so the term acquired its current sense. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology is considered the first book on the topic of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology and nanoscience got started in the early 1980s with two major developments; the birth of cluster science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). This development led to the discovery of fullerenes in 1986 and carbon nanotubes a few years later. In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor nanocrystals was studied; This led to a fast increasing number of metal oxide nanoparticles of quantum dots. The atomic force microscope was invented six years after the STM was invented. In 2000, the United States National Nanotechnology Initiative was founded to coordinate Federal nanotechnology research and development.

NEW TRENDS ON ELECTROCHEMICAL NANO-TECHNOLOGIES

NEW TRENDS ON ELECTROCHEMICAL NANO-TECHNOLOGIES

Nano-processing and nano-technology have attracted much attention in the past decades and have been utilized for fabricating information storage devices, chip interconnects, microelectronic packaging, micromechanical components, and sensors. Electrochemical nano-processing method, particularly, is a powerful technique as already shown in its applications to fabrication of magnetic recording heads or the ULSI interconnects. In the fabrication of magnetic recording heads, an electrochemical paddle plating system with a frame plating method enabled us to form a shape of three-dimensional complexity in micro-size patterning. Neither conventional dry processes nor conventional technologies of
electroplating and etching have realized such a nano-scale fabrication. Namely, the electrochemical paddle plating is a great innovation contributing to the creation of new technologies. On the other hand, we found the basic idea how to control the interface between electrode and electrolyte on the basis of atomic level mono- or sub-adsorbed layer (ad-atom layer) and, indeed, applied it to the fabrication of high-density magnetic recording medium with electroless deposition. The basic idea and the combination of the idea with nano-fabrication using electrochemical method have led to our successes in electrochemical nano-technologies. Nowadays, electrochemical wet processes are practically used in a clean room with a filtering apparatus for fabricating fine patterned devices.
We developed electrodeposition methods to fabricate CoNiFe1 and CoFe2 soft magnetic thin films with high saturation magnetic flux density for realizing an ultra high density magnetic recording system. In the field of interconnects in ULSI, the self-assembled monolayer (SAM) for direct bonding to SiO2 and the novel electroless deposition method for barrier layer were developed. In the field of bio-sensor devices, we proposed a significant process for ISFET with lithography using SAM for very small pH sensor and, moreover, the new bio-sensing system was successfully fabricated on the basis of the ISFET. The next stage energy devices for electronics such as a small DMFC were also fabricated . In this paper, new trends in the electrochemical nano-technology are introduced on the basis of the above-mentioned research works on magnetic devices, interconnects for ultra large scale integrated circuit (ULSI) devices, bio-sensor devices and energy storage devices.

Source: Tetsuya Osaka
Department of Applied Chemistry, School of Science and Engineering,
Waseda University

Source: Tetsuya Osaka

Department of Applied Chemistry, School of Science and Engineering,

Waseda University