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Indian scientist takes nanotechnology to new frontiers
Wednesday, 07 April 2004, 19:30 IST
NEW YORK: Working with materials that are not visible to the naked eye is Meyya Meyyappan's specialty.
In fact, the Indian American scientist and his three colleagues had convinced former President Bill Clinton and the US Congress to launch the National Nanotechnology Initiative when the technology was not even heard of.
Now the initiative has some $1 billion earmarked every year, with Meyyappan and his team of 60 scientists working on making nanotechnology available for future space exploration.
One nano is 10,000 times finer than the thickness of a human hair. A technology using such ultra fine material is thus an invaluable resource for innumerable applications.
Which is why Meyyappan and scientists around the world are racing to be ahead.
"There are some near-term opportunities but a lot of them are 10 to 15 years away," he cautions.
Nanotechnology could be used for electronic devices, sensors, super-strong lightweight material and a variety of other fields.
"Nanotechnology space application is just one of the many areas," Meyyappan says. "The larger benefits will be in health, medicine, transportation, computers - almost every sector of daily life."
For example, it could be used for a more effective drug delivery or early warning diagnostics. It could also be a cheaper source of energy, he reels off.
The US space agency NASA is looking at nanotechnology for its future needs on electronics, computing, sensors, and advanced miniaturization of all systems.
Born in Karaikudi in southern India's Tamil Nadu state, Meyyappan said he did not even dream as a student he would eventually end up in NASA, but he did know he wanted to be an engineer.
He came to the US in 1979 to study chemical engineering at the Clarkson University in New York. He went on to do his Ph.D. on micro-gravity materials processing, with the research funded by NASA.
"Even though I did my Ph.D. in a field related to NASA, I did not get a job with the organisation because I was not a US citizen," Dr. Meyyappan told IANS.
Instead, he joined Scientific Research Associates, a private company based in Glastonbury, Connecticut. For 12 years he worked on microelectronic devices and device processing "and a lot of things that had nothing to do with NASA".
And eight years ago, NASA came knocking at his door and recruited him to start a nanotechnology programme because he was working on quantum devices, a precursor to the technology.
The result was the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA, Ames, where Meyyappan is the director.
Meanwhile, Meyyappan and a few colleagues began discussing the need for developing a national effort on nanotechnology.
"A few of us were talking about it in the backrooms in 1997. Four of us approached the Clinton administration and Congress to push our programme through. Both Clinton and Congress were impressed and that's why we have the Nanotechnology Initiative which was approved in 1999 and started in 2000," he said.
The Center for Nanotechnology in California has about 60 scientists working on various aspects of nanotechnology including carbon nanotubes for nanoelectronics, sensors and detectors, molecular electronics.
Inorganic nanowires are being tested for sensors and devices, while protein nanotubes, nanotechnology in gene sequencing, nano-bio fusion, quantum computing, computational nanotechnology, computational quantum electronics and opto-electronics are the other areas that scientists are working on.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS
