Northwestern chemists plot the next step in nanotechnology

Researchers at Northwestern University demonstrate a new technology that may be used to miniaturize electronic circuits, put thousands of different medical sensors on an area much tinier than the head of a pin and develop an understanding of the intrinsic behavior of ultrasmall structures -- ones comprised of a small collection of molecules patterned on a solid substrate. By miniaturizing existing writing and printing techniques,...a research team led by Chad Mirkin, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and director of Northwestern's Center for Nanotechnology, has paved the way for such possibilities. In their paper (Science, Oct 15 1999), the researchers detail how they have transformed their world's smallest pen (Science, Jan. 29, 1999) into the world's smallest plotter, a device capable of drawing multiple lines of molecules -- each line only 15 nanometers or 30 molecules wide -- with such precision that only five nanometers, or about 200 billionths of an inch, separate each line. By contrast, a human hair is about 10,000 nanometers wide....It is the nano-plotter's accuracy of registration when building nanostructures of different organic molecules that could dramatically impact molecule-based electronics, molecular diagnostics and catalysis, in addition to leading to new applications not yet imagined in nanotechnology...."