Dr Robert Crawhall

Nanotechnology: Canada stands on fringe of greatness

By Dr Robert Crawhall

I recently watched my first episode of the "science fiction" TV show Fringe. The opening sequence provides a carefully crafted list of science and pseudo science designed to entice and disturb the intellectual end of the Fox networks viewing audience — psychokenesis, paranormal communication, teleportation, precognition, transmogrification — and there it was…nanotechnology. My kids thought this was really cool. Perhaps Dad's job is not so lame after all. I suspect that the our leading manufacturers who are looking for new avenues of innovation and the S&T policy makers struggling with S&T investment strategies may be less impressed.

The folks at Fox are not foolish. The inclusion of nanotechnology on the list of fringe science plays to an ambivalence about nanotechnology that I have regularly encountered since taking over as head of NanoQuébec. The problem is that nanotechnology is neither science fiction nor a concern for the indeterminate future. It certainly is not, as some pundits have recently mooted, another tech bubble already burst. There is a lot of hype and extraordinary claims receive the greatest media attention. But this should not distract policy makers, private sector strategic planners, regulators or educators from what is actually at stake.

The recent Science and Technology in Society Forum in Kyoto presented a remarkably consistent view of the timeline regarding major global challenges and the role of S&T in addressing them. Baring some catastrophic event, we will be living on a nine billion person planet by 2040 — people who will have to be fed, provided with fresh water, clothed, transported and employed.

To have any hope of maintaining a two degree cap on global temperature rise, carbon dioxide emissions will have to be stabilized by 2015 and reduced by more than 50% by 2050. How are we going to achieve these goals and maintain our standard of living while developing nations strive to achieve their own socioeconomic aspirations?

There will have to be major adjustments in manufacturing, construction, energy production and transportation in pretty short order. Also required are fundamental changes in product design enabled by changes in industrial materials. We need lighter, greener more energy efficient vehicles, environmentally friendly building products, fully recyclable packaging and locally generated energy just to name a few priorities. In many instances, research and innovation in nanoscience and nanotechnology hold the answers. Companies and countries that achieve the big breakthroughs, accumulate the knowledge and secure the intellectual property will be leaders of the next economic wave. Conversely, if we collectively fail to achieve these breakthroughs there are bad times ahead. In its starkest form the future is simple.

Aggressive global investment

This may help to explain why most of the G20 have invested heavily in building nanotechnology capacity and why these efforts are led from the most senior levels of government and industry. The United States, Japan and the larger European nations have made multi-billion dollar commitments since the turn of the millennium. China, India and Russia are determined to catch up or surpass these efforts as a matter of strategic national importance. Other players such as Taiwan and Korea are making major gains while over 30 other countries are developing nanotech niches often related to their natural resource base or manufacturing infrastructure. This is being tracked by the OECD and displayed in conferences and trade shows around the world.

Nanotechnology is often presented as a horizontal technology platform with application in many economic sectors similar to photonics, genomics and information technology. One conceptual challenge with this equivalence is that there is no photon or genome or byte of information around which the field revolves. Nanotechnology appears to apply to everything. The common thread through nanoscience and nanotechnology is the ability to directly observe and sometimes control materials at the atomic and molecular level. Working at the atomic level is not new; physicists, chemists and biologists have been doing this throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

A major breakthrough came, however, with the development and commercialization of the scanning tunnelling electron microscope and the atomic force microscope in the 1980s (for which the inventors Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer won the 1996 Nobel Prize). This put the ability to observe materials at a fundamental level within reach of scientists and engineers with problems to solve. They rapidly discovered that many things were not as they previously supposed.

Not only did people discover that common materials could be imbued with extraordinary properties and new "miracle" materials created. They also solved some long standing mysteries such as the molecular form of liquid water and the reason Portland cement works the way it does — issues that have direct bearing on sustainable development and climate change.

Our ability to directly experience the nanoscopic world can be compared to the 16th century invention of the optical microscope — an innovation that opened our eyes to the microscopic world and the all the associated discoveries of the ensuing 300 years. Now we get to do it again but with the temporal window reduced to 30 years.

Where does Canada stand in all of this? I would claim that we stand on the fringe of greatness, a claim that the OECD stats tend to corroborate placing us between 10th and 15th place globally on most related indicators. Our universities, federal laboratories and provincial and federal funding agencies have responded vigorously to the opportunities presented by nanotechnology. Here in Québec and in major centres across Canada, we are much stronger in advanced materials and nanotechnology than we were a decade ago both in terms of researchers and the infrastructure to support them.

The recently-announced University of Sherbrooke Microelectronic Innovation Centre at Bromont in partnership with IBM and DALSA will accelerate the development of microelectronic nanotechnologies across the country. The Alberta Centre for Advanced Micro Nanotechnology Products and others assure Canada an ongoing global leadership role in the next generation of microelectronics. The ArboraNano Business-Led NCE and the FP Innovations Transformative Technologies program have the potential to put Canada in a world leadership position for the development and application of cellulose-based composite materials based on nanotechnology. The NRC-NSERC-BDC Nanotechnology Initiative is contributing to Canadian strength in photovoltaic nanotechnologies, lightweight composite materials and instrumentation for environmental monitoring.

In the negative column, there is a relative lack of private sector leadership and investment compared to other countries. The absence of a federal nanotechnology strategy to help guide and explain major private and public investment remains a source of puzzlement for our international partners that is only partially dispelled by a tutorial on the peculiarities of Canadian federal-provincial relations.

More troubling is a dearth of receptor capacity within many of our industries. Key technical personnel, particularly in SMEs, are either too occupied with short-term deliverables or out of their comfort zone with recent advances in nanotechnology. Industry is hard-pressed to articulate the problems that need resolving in terms that nanotechnology researchers can respond to. Furthermore, changes in industrial materials create downstream issues for supply management, quality assurance, occupational health and safety and design infrastructure that are not addressed by our highly frontend-weighted approach to innovation.

Industrial access to specialized equipment and expertise often found only in universities or federal laboratories is highly variable across the country particularly for SMEs. The removal of Major Resource Support Program funding from regional infrastructure by NSERC has inadvertently exacerbated this situation. Providing some regulatory stability and structure is essential for private sector investment. But mostly what we need is vision and industrial leadership backed by a strong commitment from government to keep Canadian companies on the front lines of solution providers. Nanotechnology is not a panacea but it provides us with an important toolkit to deal with the defining industrial challenges of the early 21st century. It is time to turn off the TV and get with the program.

Dr Robert Crawhall is president/CEO of NanoQuébec (www.nanoquebec.ca), member of the Board of ArboraNano BL-NCE, Canadian representative to ISO229 WGIV on nanotechnology material specifications, a member of the Canada-Japan advanced materials and nanotechnology champions group and member of the advisory committee to the NRC's Steacie Institute of Molecular Sciences. He was formerly director of Advanced Technology Strategic Planning and of Disruptive Network Technologies and Global University Research at Nortel.