Following up on yesterday’s news from Simon Fraser University (SFU), I gather that maskwriting has to do with fabricating nanoscale materials and the facility they will be building for their 4D Labs will allow them to create nanoscale structures that measure less than 20 nanometres.

“This capability will eventually be as key to nanoscale materials fabrication as the photocopier is to information dissemination,” explains [Byron] Gates, 4D LABS’ director of nanofabrication. “With our new maskwriting facility, we’ll be able to fabricate the next generation of technologies, particularly in the fields of alternative energy and biomedical engineering.”

Local companies will not have send off to Alberta to get this work done and it will give 4D Labs some revenue.  Given that universities are under pressure these days to develop new revenue streams, this has to be good news.

Meanwhile, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently published a paper describing their work on bottom-up engineering of DNA ‘seeds’. The two main approaches to engineering in nanotechnology (and this is simplified) are top-down and bottom-up. Traditional enginerring has been top-down; we make things smaller and smaller. The bottom-up approach means taking your cue from biological processes (or nature) and encouraging objects to build themselves or to ‘grow’. There’s more here.

The Project for Emergining Nanotechnologies’ June 17, 2009 event (mentioned in yesterday’s posting) has been rescheduled to Fall 2009.