To accelerate nanotechnology development in support of the President’s priorities and innovation strategy, OSTP and the NNI member agencies have identified areas ripe for significant advances through close and targeted program-level interagency collaboration. This collaboration now includes nanotechnology signature initiatives that are intended to enable the rapid advancement of science and technology in the service of national economic, security, and environmental goals by focusing resources on critical challenges and R&D gaps. These activities also leverage skills, resources, and capabilities among various agencies in a concerted effort to maximize scientific and technological progress. The nanotechnology signature initiatives are being developed in the context of all four NNI goals. They are intended to genuinely affect the agency budget process, as encouraged by Administration guidance, and to dramatically improve ground-level functional coordination between agencies.
The interagency groups supporting each initiative will identify thrust areas within each of the proposed initiative topics and identify specific agency programs that are involved. Each nanotechnology signature initiative interagency group will select key research targets associated with near-and long-term expected outcomes, to help evaluate progress on an ongoing basis. The NSET Subcommittee anticipates participation and input from industry and other stakeholders on current and future nanotechnology signature initiatives. The first three nanotechnology signature initiatives are summarized below, with links to each initiative's full-length formal document.
The President’s agenda calls for the development of carbon-neutral alternative energy sources to mitigate global climate change, reduce dependence on foreign oil, improve the economy, and improve the environment. Long-term carbon reduction targets can and likely will be met by a portfolio of technologies, of which solar energy has the potential to play a prominent role. Solar energy is readily available, free from geopolitical tension, and not a threat to the environment through pollution or to the climate through greenhouse gas emission. The development of a solar energy infrastructure will not only support U.S. energy independence but also represents an unparalleled economic opportunity if the United States can maintain scientific and industrial leadership in this field. Today, the levelized cost of energy generated by solar technology is not yet economically competitive with conventional fossil fuel technologies without subsidies. Therefore, new innovations and fundamental breakthroughs can help accelerate the development of economical solar energy technologies that surpass the limits of existing technologies. Nanotechnology can help overcome current performance barriers and substantially improve the collection and conversion of solar energy. A number of nanoscale physical phenomena have been identified that can improve the collection and conversion of solar energy. Nanoparticles and nanostructures have been shown to enhance the absorption of light, increase the conversion of light to electricity, and provide better thermal storage and transport. However, current demonstrations of these technologies fall short of potential performance because of poor control over feature size and placement, unpredictable micro/nanostructure, poor interface formation, and in many cases, short lifetimes of laboratory devices. The goal of this initiative is to exploit the benefits of nanotechnology by enhancing understanding of energy conversion and storage phenomena at the nanoscale, improving nanoscale characterization of electronic properties, and helping enable economical nanomanufacturing.
The promise of establishing a significant number of new, high-value industries based on the past decade of investment in the NNI will be realized only if suitable manufacturing technologies can be developed to economically and reliably produce nanotechnology-based products on a commercial scale. The semiconductor industry has achieved this, but the production methods are not scalable or economical for the diversity of new materials and products at the volumes and length scales required: radically new approaches are needed. Moreover, for such products to be ubiquitous in the nation’s future economy, they and their associated manufacturing processes must be sustainable by design. To create the foundation
for achieving this vision, the goal of this initiative is to accelerate the development of industrial-scale methods for manufacturing functional nanoscale systems. The initiative targets production-worthy scaling of three classes of sustainable materials (high-performance structural carbon-based nanomaterials, optical metamaterials, and cellulosic nanomaterials) that have the potential to affect multiple industry sectors with significant economic impact. The formation of consortia with industry, government, and academic representation is a key aspect of the specific material thrusts.
An essential prerequisite for the development of cost-effective nanomanufacturing is the availability of high-throughput, inline metrology to enable closed-loop process control and quality assurance. The initiative is therefore focused directly on the development of inexpensive, rapid, and accurate measurement techniques. The U.S. has expertise in roll-to-roll manufacturing, which can be adapted to the types of high-volume fabrication processes envisioned. The formation of a consortium devoted to the development of metrology methods to enable roll-to-roll application to nanomanufacturing is expected to play an essential role here. The systems to be manufactured based on these methods will include disruptive technologies for lightweight, high-strength, sustainable materials; solar energy harvesting; waste-heat management and recovery; and energy storage. Success of the initiative will result in the immediate extension of the methods developed to more complex components and systems as future nanodevices mature and will help secure and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base.
The semiconductor industry is a major driver of the modern U.S. economy and has accounted for a large portion of the productivity gains that have characterized the global economy since the 1990s. Recent advances in this area have been fueled by what is known as Moore’s Law scaling, which has successfully predicted the exponential increase in the performance of computing devices for the last 40 years. This gain has been achieved due to ever-increasing miniaturization of semiconductor processing and memory devices (smaller and faster switches and transistors). Continuing to shrink the dimensions of electronic devices is important in order to further increase processor speed, reduce device switching energy, increase system functionality, and reduce manufacturing cost per bit. However, as the dimensions of critical elements of devices approach atomic size, quantum tunneling and other quantum effects degrade and ultimately prohibit the operations of conventional devices. Researchers are therefore pursuing more radical approaches to overcome these fundamental physics limitations. Candidate approaches include different types of logic using cellular automata or quantum entanglement and superposition; 3D spatial architectures; and information-carrying variables other than electron charge, such as photon polarization, electron spin, and position and states of atoms and molecules. Approaches based on nanoscale science, engineering, and technology are most promising for realizing these radical changes and are expected to change the very nature of electronics and the essence of how electronic devices are manufactured. Rapidly reinforcing domestic R&D successes in these arenas could establish a U.S. domestic manufacturing base that will dominate 21st-century electronics commerce. The goal of this initiative is to accelerate the discovery and use of novel nanoscale fabrication processes and innovative concepts to produce revolutionary materials, devices, systems, and architectures to advance the field of nanoelectronics.
