ITRI Printable News Release - MRL hosted the 2001 Taiwan Applications of Nanotechnology Workshop

Oct. 16, 2001

Commissioned by the Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), the Materials Research laboratories (MRL) of ITRI hosted the 2001 Taiwan Applications of Nanotechnology Workshop in Hsinchu during October 17-18. The workshop discussed fundamental theories of applying nanotechnology to material science as well as manufacturing, controlling, measuring, and application of kernel technologies. Experts from domestic industrial, governmental, academic, and research sectors were invited to share their experience and expertise. It is hoped that this workshop will help to create cooperation opportunities for the development of nanotechnology in Taiwan.

Nano is a unit of length. One nanometer (nm) is equal to one-billionth meter. When a one-meter tall girl is scale down to a nanometer, it is possible to observe her DNA structure. In applications, a compact disc (CD) manufactured by using micron technology has a memory capacity of 640MB with every storage spot of 500nm and the density of 10⁸bit/cm². A digital versatile disc (DVD) expands the capacity eight to 16 times more than a CD does, boosting the storage to 4.7GB~8.5GB. If the storage spot is reduced to 50nm, the capacity of a CD may increase 100 times to 64GB. Moreover, if one makes an atom a storage signal, the density of a disc may increase to 10¹⁴ bit/cm², boosting the capacity to 640TB, one million times larger than the current one. With such progress, to store the entire collection of the Library of Congress into a memory bank the size of a lump of sugar or to immerse an ultra-mini submarine into a human body to repair damaged tissues may no longer be an impossible mission.

Of course, the nanotechnology is more than minimizing the size to make tiny parts. Once the size of some material is reduced into a scale of 1-100nm, it may exhibit new characteristics and phenomena. For example, because the intrinsic surface nanostructure upon the lotus leaf, it can prevent the surface being mudded. The melting point of gold can reduced from 1063&Mac251;C to 730&Mac251;C if its size is minimized to 5nm. The electrical conductivity of the nano-scale TiO2 is several times better than the micron-scale one. If all these phenomena can be manipulated, manufactured, and applied, it will bring revolutionary changes to current technologies. By that time, it is feasible to manufacture semiconductor under 0.1µm, 30nm recording magneto-material with storage capacity of 7,000Mbit/cm², almost-unlimited rechargeable lithium batteries, computers with computing speed at 100,000GHz, and so on.

The nanotechnology is globally accepted as a revolutionary technology to pave the way for the next stage manufacturing industry in the 21st century. The U.S., Japan, and European Union countries are all aggressively taking up positions in the field, and invest around US$4-5 billion every year for relevant R&D. Currently, the U.S. has its edge in nanoscale structure, nano-powder, nanotube, nano electronic devices, and nano-biotechnology. Germany is known for its nano materials, nanoscale measurement, and nano film technologies while Japan in nano electronic devices and inorganic nano materials. The development of those technologies will impact Taiwan's current niches in semiconductor, opto-electronic, and information industries. MOEA has considered nanotechnology is one of the most important investments of the country and is also the key to upgrade the competitiveness of domestic industry to shift from current OEM position to an innovation-oriented level. It is hoped that the advancement of nanotechnology will steer Taiwan into a technology-advanced country.

For more information, please contact Dr. Kevin Chou at Tel: 886-3-5914099; email: ywchou@itri.org.tw.