Imagine a material that is as strong as steel, but light as a feather. Imagine another material that has the properties of plastic, but can conduct electricity. Imagine yet another material that has the properties of drywall, but suffers little damage from a hammer.
Thanks to nanotechnology — defined by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology as the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale — these kinds of materials could very well become part of our daily lives, said Adriana Vela, founder and chief executive officer of NanoTecNexus, a nanotechnology nonprofit group.
“Making a product stronger and lighter or better just from the material — from the building blocks up — has tremendous implications across basically every industry and every walk of life,” Vela said.
While still in the early stages, the technology is gaining recognition and acceptance. The world will need 2 million nanotechnology workers by 2015, according to a National Science Foundation prediction.
To help meet this demand, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) opened one of the nation’s first nanoengineering departments in 2007. In addition, the university is home to a professional society for nanotechnology students that promotes collaboration and knowledge exchange.
The world’s governments and corporations are pumping billions of dollars into nanotechnology research and development. Funding reached $18.2 billion in 2008, a little more than half of which came from corporations, according to a Lux Research market report. And over the years, the world has already spent roughly $45 billion on the technology, Vela said.
Not all of those research projects will be commercialized, she said, but a good chunk of them will. Even if a conservative 10 percent of the $45 billion could become commercialized, that would equal $4.5 billion worth of technology. Companies will jump at the chance to capitalize on this research, but, Vela said, they must have workers who understand the technology.
"The manufacturers for products definitely want to bring in the technology," she said. "There’s money to be made, and they need skilled nanotech-savvy workers to be able to do this job."
