Ron May Talks Nano

Ron May is a local legend around Chicago. He haunts all the Windy City tech conferences, dragging behind him shopping bags full of literature that he collects at booths and recording the talks that he finds interesting. Every week, he sends out an e-mailed May report, which you can also find online. He has plenty of readers, and he adds a lot of their comments and insights to his product (I like this idea; free content. Send all your valuable contributions to steven.alan.edwards@gmail.com. I promise full attribution). Ron started out covering mainly the IT industry--hardware, software and financial dealings--but he has been lately branching out to other areas, including nanotech.

From his latest report:

“There are big changes taking place in nanotech over the last eighteen months. Rather than the manipulation of nano particles, things are now moving toward industrial and bulk production. The key word is carbon nanotubes. Remember that term. It may supplant the general term "nanotech" over the next few years. It could be the replacement for silicon based electronics…”

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Nanotech is hardly a one-trick pony. But nanotubes do have a lot of potential. He goes on:

”Nanotubes could completely replace silicon-based electronics such as chips. They can extend Moore's Law by three to four orders of magnitude. We can foreseeably put a thousand to ten thousand times the density of transistors on the same space. We have started to reach the end of Moore's Law in silicon technology. Another area for nanotubes is space research, alternative energy sources, helmets, glass for cars, visors, all sorts of things.”

Ah, the bright shining enthusiasm of the newly converted. He continues:

”Room temperature superconductivity is another possibility. There is an enormous potential to replace copper wires. If 25% of the copper wires in the US are replaced with carbon nanotubes, assuming the technology can be perfected, it would eliminate the need for imported oil, since we suffer staggering losses in the transmission of electricity. I would like to see that study --- so far, I have just heard about it.”

Before he died, Richard Smalley, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of fullerenes, was a big supporter of the idea of carbon nanotube-based transmission lines. I’m not sure that nanotubes are really superconductors, but truly they are superb conductors, at least an order of magnitude better than copper, which dissipates a lot of current into heat. Obviously, there is not enough manufacturing capacity for carbon nanotubes right now and the expense is too high to make a much of a dent in the need for imported oil right now, but it is a goal devoutly to be wished (wouldn’t you really love to tell the sheiks where to put their black, scummy stuff?). And the possibility is real; carbon nanotubes are made entirely of carbon, which is one of the most abundant elements on this planet. If we can get the cost down far enough (and it is falling rapidly), nanotube transmission lines are within the realm of possibility.

And the fact that Ron May is now talking about nanotechnology is a good sign. The message is being amplified.