Tag Archives: nanomanufacturing

Altered virus spins gold into beads

They’re not calling this synthetic biology but I’ m pretty sure that altering a virus gene so the virus can spin gold (Rumpelstiltskin anyone?) qualifies. From an August 24, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily,

The race is on to find manufacturing techniques capable of arranging molecular and nanoscale objects with precision.

Engineers at the University of California, Riverside, have altered a virus to arrange gold atoms into spheroids measuring a few nanometers in diameter. The finding could make production of some electronic components cheaper, easier, and faster.

An August 23, 2018 University of California at Riverside (UCR) news release (also on EurekAlett) by Holly Ober, which originated the news item, adds detail,

“Nature has been assembling complex, highly organized nanostructures for millennia with precision and specificity far superior to the most advanced technological approaches,” said Elaine Haberer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering in UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering and senior author of the paper describing the breakthrough. “By understanding and harnessing these capabilities, this extraordinary nanoscale precision can be used to tailor and build highly advanced materials with previously unattainable performance.”

Viruses exist in a multitude of shapes and contain a wide range of receptors that bind to molecules. Genetically modifying the receptors to bind to ions of metals used in electronics causes these ions to “stick” to the virus, creating an object of the same size and shape. This procedure has been used to produce nanostructures used in battery electrodes, supercapacitors, sensors, biomedical tools, photocatalytic materials, and photovoltaics.

The virus’ natural shape has limited the range of possible metal shapes. Most viruses can change volume under different scenarios, but resist the dramatic alterations to their basic architecture that would permit other forms.

The M13 bacteriophage, however, is more flexible. Bacteriophages are a type of virus that infects bacteria, in this case, gram-negative bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, which is ubiquitous in the digestive tracts of humans and animals. M13 bacteriophages genetically modified to bind with gold are usually used to form long, golden nanowires.

Studies of the infection process of the M13 bacteriophage have shown the virus can be converted to a spheroid upon interaction with water and chloroform. Yet, until now, the M13 spheroid has been completely unexplored as a nanomaterial template.

Haberer’s group added a gold ion solution to M13 spheroids, creating gold nanobeads that are spiky and hollow.

“The novelty of our work lies in the optimization and demonstration of a viral template, which overcomes the geometric constraints associated with most other viruses,” Haberer said. “We used a simple conversion process to make the M13 virus synthesize inorganic spherical nanoshells tens of nanometers in diameter, as well as nanowires nearly 1 micron in length.”

The researchers are using the gold nanobeads to remove pollutants from wastewater through enhanced photocatalytic behavior.

The work enhances the utility of the M13 bacteriophage as a scaffold for nanomaterial synthesis. The researchers believe the M13 bacteriophage template transformation scheme described in the paper can be extended to related bacteriophages.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

M13 bacteriophage spheroids as scaffolds for directed synthesis of spiky gold nanostructures by Tam-Triet Ngo-Duc, Joshua M. Plank, Gongde Chen, Reed E. S. Harrison, Dimitrios Morikis, Haizhou Liu, and Elaine D. Haberer. Nanoscale, 2018,10, 13055-13063 DOI: 10.1039/C8NR03229G First published on 25 Jun 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

For another example of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, see my July 18, 2018 posting: Genetic engineering: an eggplant in Bangladesh and a synthetic biology grant at Concordia University (Canada).

For anyone unfamiliar with the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale about spinning straw into gold, see its Wikipedida entry.

An examination of nanomanufacturing and nanofabrication

Michael Berger has written an Aug. 11, 2016 Nanowerk Spotlight review of a paper about nanomanufacturing (Note: A link has been removed),

… the path to greater benefits – whether economic, social, or environmental – from nanomanufactured goods and services is not yet clear. A recent review article in ACS Nano (“Nanomanufacturing: A Perspective”) by J. Alexander Liddle and Gregg M. Gallatin, takes silicon integrated circuit manufacturing as a baseline in order to consider the factors involved in matching processes with products, examining the characteristics and potential of top-down and bottom-up processes, and their combination.

The authors also discuss how a careful assessment of the way in which function can be made to follow form can enable high-volume manufacturing of nanoscale structures with the desired useful, and exciting, properties.

Although often used interchangeably, it makes sense to distinguish between nanofabrication and nanomanufacturing using the criterion of economic viability, suggested by the connotations of industrial scale and profitability associated with the word ‘manufacturing’.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper Berger is reviewing,

Nanomanufacturing: A Perspective by J. Alexander Liddle and Gregg M. Gallatin. ACS Nano, 2016, 10 (3), pp 2995–3014 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b03299 Publication Date (Web): February 10, 2016

Copyright This article not subject to U.S. Copyright. Published 2016 by the American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Luckily for those who’d like a little more information before purchase, Berger’s review provides some insight into the study additional to what you’ll find in the abstract,

Nanomanufacturing, as the authors define it in their article, therefore, has the salient characteristic of being a source of money, while nanofabrication is often a sink.

To supply some background and indicate the scale of the nanomanufacturing challenge, the figure below shows the selling price ($·m-2) versus the annual production (m2) for a variety of nanoenabled or potentially nanoenabled products. The overall global market sizes are also indicated. It is interesting to note that the selling price spans 5 orders of magnitude, the production six, and the market size three. Although there is no strong correlation between the variables,
market price and size nanoenabled product
Log-log plot of the approximate product selling price ($·m-2) versus global annual production (m2) for a variety of nanoenabled, or potentially nanoenabled products. Approximate market sizes (2014) are shown next to each point. (Reprinted with permission by American Chemical Society)

market price and size nanoenabled product
Log-log plot of the approximate product selling price ($·m-2) versus global annual production (m2) for a variety of nanoenabled, or potentially nanoenabled products. Approximate market sizes (2014) are shown next to each point. (Reprinted with permission by American Chemical Society)

I encourage anyone interested in nanomanufacturing to read Berger’s article in its entirety as there is more detail and there are more figures to illustrate the points being made. He ends his review with this,

“Perhaps the most exciting prospect is that of creating dynamical nanoscale systems that are capable of exhibiting much richer structures and functionality. Whether this is achieved by learning how to control and engineer biological systems directly, or by building systems based on the same principles, remains to be seen, but will undoubtedly be disruptive and quite probably revolutionary.”

I find the reference to biological systems quite interesting especially in light of the recent launch of DARPA’s (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Engineered Living Materials (ELM) program (see my Aug. 9, 2016 posting).

‘Valley of Death’, ‘Manufacturing Middle’, and other concerns in new government report about the future of nanomanufacturing in the US

A Feb. 8, 2014 news item on Nanowerk features a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) publication announcement (Note:  A link has been removed),

In a new report on nanotechnology manufacturing (or nanomanufacturing) released yesterday (“Nanomanufacturing: Emergence and Implications for U.S. Competitiveness, the Environment, and Human Health”; pdf), the U.S. Government Accountability Office finds flaws in America’s approach to many things nano.

At a July 2013 forum, participants from industry, government, and academia discussed the future of nanomanufacturing; investments in nanotechnology R&D and challenges to U.S. competitiveness; ways to enhance U.S. competitiveness; and EHS concerns.

A summary and a PDF version of the report, published Jan. 31, 2014, can be found here on the GAO’s GAO-14-181SP (report’s document number) webpage.  From the summary,

The forum’s participants described nanomanufacturing as a future megatrend that will potentially match or surpass the digital revolution’s effect on society and the economy. They anticipated further scientific breakthroughs that will fuel new engineering developments; continued movement into the manufacturing sector; and more intense international competition.

Although limited data on international investments made comparisons difficult, participants viewed the U.S. as likely leading in nanotechnology research and development (R&D) today. At the same time, they identified several challenges to U.S. competitiveness in nanomanufacturing, such as inadequate U.S. participation and leadership in international standard setting; the lack of a national vision for a U.S. nanomanufacturing capability; some competitor nations’ aggressive actions and potential investments; and funding or investment gaps in the United States (illustrated in the figure, below), which may hamper U.S. innovators’ attempts to transition nanotechnology from R&D to full-scale manufacturing.

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I read through (skimmed) this 125pp (PDF version;  119 pp. print version) report and allthough it’s not obvious in the portion I’ve excerpted from the summary or in the following sections, the participants did seem to feel that the US national nanotechnology effort was in relatively good shape overall but with some shortcomings that may become significant in the near future.

First, government investment illustrates the importance the US has placed on its nanotechnology efforts (excerpted from p. 11 PDF; p. 5 print),

Focusing on U.S. public investment since 2001, the overall growth in the funding of nanotechnology has been substantial, as indicated by the funding of the federal interagency National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), with a cumulative investment of about $18 billion for fiscal years 2001 through 20133. Adding the request for fiscal year 2014 brings the total to almost $20 billion. However, the amounts budgeted in recent years have not shown an increasing trend.

Next, the participants in the July 2013 forum focused on four innovations in four different industry sectors as a means of describing the overall situation (excerpted from p. 16 PDF; p. 10 print):

Semiconductors (Electronics and semiconductors)

Battery-powered vehicles (Energy and power)

Nano-based concrete (Materials and chemical industries)

Nanotherapeutics (Pharmaceuticals, biomedical, and biotechnology)

There was some talk about nanotechnology as a potentially disruptive technology,

Nanomanufacturing could eventually bring disruptive innovation and the creation of new jobs—at least for the nations that are able to compete globally. According to the model suggested by Christensen (2012a; 2012b), which was cited by a forum participant, the widespread disruption of existing industries (and their supply chains) can occur together with the generation of broader markets, which can lead to net job creation, primarily for nations that bring the disruptive technology to market. The Ford automobile plant (with its dramatic changes in the efficient assembly of vehicles) again provides an historical example: mass – produced automobiles made cheaply enough—through economies of scale—were sold to vast numbers of consumers, replacing horse and buggy transportation and creating jobs to (1) manufacture large numbers of cars and develop the supply chain; (2) retail new cars; and (3) service them. The introduction of minicomputers and then personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s provides another historical example; the smaller computers disrupted the dominant mainframe computing industry (Christensen et al. 2000). Personal computers were provided to millions of homes, and an analyst in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Freeman 1996) documented the creation of jobs in related areas such as selling home computers and software. According to Christensen (2012b), “[A]lmost all net growth in jobs in America has been created by companies that were empowering—companies that made complicated things affordable and accessible so that more people could own them and use them.”14 As a counterpoint, a recent report analyzing manufacturing today (Manyika et al. 2012, 4) claims that manufacturing “cannot be expected to create mass employment in advanced economies on the scale that it did decades ago.”

Interestingly, there is no mention in any part of the report of the darker sides of a disruptive technology. After all, there were people who were very, very upset over the advent of computers. For example, a student (I was teaching a course on marketing communication) once informed me that she and her colleagues used to regularly clear bullets from the computerized equipment they were sending up to the camps (memory fails as to whether these were mining or logging camps) in northern British Columbia in the early days of the industry’s computerization.

Getting back to the report, I wasn’t expecting to see that one of the perceived problems is the US failure to participate in setting standards (excerpted from p. 23 PDF; p. 17 print),

Lack of sufficient U.S. participation in setting standards for nanotechnology or nanomanufacturing. Some participants discussed a possible need for a stronger role for the United States in setting commercial standards for nanomanufactured goods (including defining basic terminology in order to sell products in global markets).17

The participants discussed the ‘Valley of Death’ and the ‘Missing Middle’ (excerpted from pp. 31-2 PDF; pp. 25-6 print)

Forum participants said that middle-stage funding, investment, and support gaps occur for not only technology innovation but also manufacturing innovation. They described the Valley of Death (that is, the potential lack of funding or investment that may characterize the middle stages in the development of a technology or new product) and the Missing Middle (that is, a similar lack of adequate support for the middle stages of developing a manufacturing process or approach), as explained below.

The Valley of Death refers to a gap in funding or investment that can occur after research on a new technology and its initial development—for example, when the technology moves beyond tests in a controlled laboratory setting.22 In the medical area, participants said the problem of inadequate funding /investment may be exacerbated by requirements for clinical trials. To illustrate, one participant said that $10 million to $20 million is needed to bring a new medical treatment into clinical trials, but “support from [a major pharmaceutical company] typically is not forthcoming until Phase II clinical trials,” resulting in a  Valley of Death for  some U.S. medical innovations. Another participant mentioned an instance where a costly trial was required for an apparently low risk medical device—and this participant tied high costs of this type to potential difficulties that medical innovators might have obtaining venture capital. A funding /investment gap at this stage can prevent further development of a technology.

The term  Missing Middle has been used to refer to the lack of funding/investment that can occur with respect to manufacturing innovation—that is, maturing manufacturing capabilities and processes to produce technologies at scale, as illustrated in figure 8.23 Here, another important lack of support may be the absence of what one participant called an “industrial commons”  to sustain innovation within a  manufacturing sector.24 Logically, successful transitioning across the  middle stages of manufacturing development is a prerequisite to  achieving successful new approaches to manufacturing at scale.

There was discussion of the international scene with regard to the ‘Valley of Death’ and the ‘Missing Middle’ (excerpted from pp. 41-2 PDF; pp. 35-6 print)

Participants said that the Valley of Death and Missing Middle funding and investment gaps, which are of concern in the United States, do not apply to the same extent in some other countries—for example, China and Russia—or are being addressed. One participant said that other countries in which these gaps have occurred “have zeroed in [on them] with a laser beam.” Another participant summed up his view of the situation with the statement: “Government investments in establishing technology platforms, technology transfer, and commercialization are higher in other countries than in the United States.”  He further stated that those making higher investments include China, Russia, and the European Union.

Multiple participants referred to the European Commission’s upcoming Horizon 2020 program, which will have major funding extending over 7 years. In addition to providing major funding for fundamental research, the Horizon 2020 website states that the program will help to:

“…bridge the gap between research and the market by, for example, helping innovative enterprises to develop their technological breakthroughs into viable products with real commercial potential. This market-driven approach will include creating partnerships with the private sector and Member States to bring together the resources needed.”

A key program within Horizon 2020 consists of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), which as illustrated in the “Knowledge Triangle” shown figure 11, below, emphasizes the nexus of business, research, and higher education. The 2014-2020 budget for this portion of Horizon 2020 is 2.7 billion euros (or close to $3.7 billion in U.S. dollars as of January 2014).

As is often the case with technology and science, participants mentioned intellectual property (IP) (excerpted from pp. 43-44 PDF; pp. 37-8 print),

Several participants discussed threats to IP associated with global competition.43 One participant described persistent attempts by other countries (or by certain elements in other countries) to breach information  systems at his nanomanufacturing company. Another described an IP challenge pertaining to research at U.S. universities, as follows:

•due to a culture of openness, especially among students, ideas and research are “leaking out” of universities prior to the initial researchers having patented or fully pursued them;

•there are many foreign students at U.S. universities; and

•there is a current lack of awareness about “leakage” and of university policies or training to counter it.

Additionally, one of our earlier interviewees said that one country targeted. Specific research projects at U.S. universities—and then required its own citizen-students to apply for admission to each targeted U.S. university and seek work on the targeted project.

Taken together with other factors, this situation can result in an overall failure to protect IP and undermine U.S. research competitiveness. (Although a culture of openness and the presence of foreign students are  generally considered strengths of the U.S. system, in this context such factors could represent a challenge to capturing the full value of U.S. investments.)

I would have liked to have seen a more critical response to the discussion about IP issues given the well-documented concerns regarding IP and its depressing affect on competitiveness as per my June 28, 2012 posting titled: Billions lost to patent trolls; US White House asks for comments on intellectual property (IP) enforcement; and more on IP, my  Oct. 10, 2012 posting titled: UN’s International Telecommunications Union holds patent summit in Geneva on Oct. 10, 2012, and my Oct. 31, 2011 posting titled: Patents as weapons and obstacles, amongst many, many others here.

This is a very readable report and it answered a few questions for me about the state of nanomanufacturing.

ETA Feb. 10, 2014 at 2:45 pm PDT, The Economist magazine has a Feb. 7, 2014 online article about this new report from the US.

ETA April 2, 2014: There’s an April 1, 2014 posting about this report  on the Foresight Institute blog titled, US government report highlights flaws in US nanotechnology effort.