let's imagine a sculptor building a

statue just chipping away with this

chisel Michelangelo had this elegant way

of describing it when he said every

block of stone has a statue inside of it

and it's the task of the sculptor to

discover it but what if he worked in the

opposite direction not from a solid

block of stone from a pile of dust

somehow gluing millions of these

particles together to form a statue I

know that's an absurd notion it's

probably impossible the only way you get

a statue from a pile of dust is if the

statue built itself if somehow we could

compel millions of these particles to

come together to form the statue Oh as

odd as that sounds that is like almost

exactly the problem I work on in my lab

I don't build with stone I build with

nano materials there are these just

impossibly small fascinating little

objects they're so small that if this

controller was a nanoparticle a human

hair would be the size of this entire

room and there at the heart of a field

we called nanotechnology which I'm sure

we've all heard about and we've all

heard how it is going to change

everything you know when I was a

graduate student it was one of the most

exciting times be working in

nanotechnology there were scientific

breakthroughs happening all of the time

the conferences were buzzing there was

tons of money pouring in from funding

agencies and the reason is when objects

get really small they're governed by a

different set of physics that govern

ordinary objects like the ones we

interact with we call this physics

quantum mechanics and what it tells you

is that you can precisely tune their

behavior just by making seemingly small

changes to them like adding or removing

a handful of atoms or twisting the

material it's like this ultimate toolkit

you really felt empowered you felt like

you could make anything and we were

doing it and by we I mean you know my

whole generation of graduate students we

were trying to make blazing fast

computers using nanomaterials we were

constructing quantum dots that could one

day go in your body and find and fight

disease there were even groups trying to

make an elevator to space

using carbon nanotubes you can look that

up that's true anyways we thought it

wouldn't affect all parts of Science and

Technology from computing to medicine

and I have to admit I drank all of the

kool-aid I mean every last drop but that

was like 15 years ago

and we took fantastic science was done

really important work we've learned a

lot we were never able to translate that

science into new technologies into

technologies that could actually impact

people and the reason is these

nanomaterials they're like a

double-edged sword the same thing that

makes them so interesting their small

size also makes them like impossible to

work with it's literally like trying to

build a statue out of a pile of dust and

we just don't have the tools that are

small enough to work with them but even

if we did it wouldn't really matter

because we couldn't one by one place

millions of particles together to build

a technology so because of that all of

the promise and all of the excitement

has remained just that promise and

excitement we don't have any disease

fighting nanobots

there's no elevators to space and the

thing that I'm most interested in no new

types of computing now that last one

that's a really important one we just

have come to expect the pace of good

computing advancements to go on

indefinitely we've built entire

economies on this idea and this pace

exists because of our ability to pack

more and more devices onto a computer

chip and as those devices get smaller

they get faster they consume less power

and they get cheaper and it's these this

convergence that caught that gives us

this incredible pace as an example if I

took the room sized computer that sent

three men to the moon and back and

somehow compressed it okay

compress like the world's greatest

computer of its day so it was the same

size as your smartphone your actual

smartphone that thing you spent 300

bucks on it just toss out every two

years would blow this thing away like

you would not be impressed it couldn't

do anything that your smartphone does it

would be slow you couldn't put any of

your stuff on it you could possibly get

through like the first two minutes of a

Walking Dead episode if you're lucky

the point is the progress it's not

gradual the progress is relentless it's

exponential it compounds on itself year

after year to the point where if you

compare a technology from one generation

to the next

they're like almost unrecognizable and

we owe it to ourselves to keep this

progress going we want to say the same

thing 10 20 30 years from now look what

we've done over the last 30 years yet we

know this progress may not last forever

in fact the party is kind of winding

down it's like like last call for

alcohol right if you look under the

covers by many metrics like speed and

performance the progress has already

slowed to a halt so if we want to keep

this party going we have to do what

we've always been able to do and that is

to innovate so our groups are groups

role in our groups mission is to

innovate by employing carbon nanotubes

because we think that they can provide a

path to continue this pace they are just

like they sound their tiny hollow tubes

of carbon atoms and their nano scale

size that small size gives rise to these

just outstanding electronic properties

and the science tells us if we could

employ them in computing we could see up

to a 10 times improvement in performance

it's like skipping through several

technology generations in just one step

so there we have it we have like this

really important problem and we have

what is basically the ideal solution the

science is like screaming at us like

this is what you should be doing to

solve your problem but you so it's like

all right you know let's get started

let's do this then you just run right

back into that double-edged sword this

ideal solution contains a material

that's second impossible to work with

I'd have to arrange billions of them

just to make one single computer chip

it's that same conundrum it's like this

undying problem so this point we said

let's just stop let's not go down that

same road let's just figure out like

what's missing right what are we not

dealing with what are we not doing that

needs to be done it's like in The

Godfather right when Fredo betrays his

brother Michael like we all know what

needs to be done I mean Fredo's got to

go but Michael you know he puts it off

and like fine I get it their mother's

still alive it would make her upset we

just said like what's the Fredo in our

problem

like what are we not dealing with what

are we not doing but needs to be done to

make this a success and the answer is

that the statue has to build itself we

have to find a way somehow to compel to

compel to convince billions of these

particles to assemble themselves into

the technology okay we can't do it for

them you know they have to do it for

themselves and it's the hard way and

this is not trivial but in this case

it's the only way now as it turns out

this is not that alien of a problem okay

we just don't build anything this way

right people don't build anything this

way but if you look around and there's

examples everywhere

mother nature builds everything this way

everything is built from the bottom up

all right you can go to the beach you'll

find these simple organisms that use

proteins just basically molecule says to

template what is essentially sand just

plucking it from the sea and building

these extraordinary architectures with

extreme diversity and nature's not crude

like us just hacking away I mean she's

elegant and smart building with what's

available molecule by molecule making

structures with a complexity and a

diversity that we can't even approach

and she's already at the Nano she's been

there for hundreds of millions of years

you know we're the ones that are late to

the party so we decided we're going to

use the same tool that nature uses and

that's chemistry chemistry is the

missing tool and chemistry works in this

case because these nanoscale objects are

about the same size as molecules so we

can use them to steer these objects

around much like a tool as exactly what

we've done in our lab we've developed

chemistry that goes into the pile of

dust into the pile of nano particles and

pulls out exactly the ones we need then

we can use chemistry to arrange

literally billions of these particles

into the pattern we need to build

circuits and because we can do that we

can build circuits that are many times

faster than what anyone's been able to

make using nanomaterials before

chemistry is a missing tool and every

day our tool gets sharper and gets more

precise and eventually we hope this is

within a handful of years we can deliver

on one of those original promises now

computing is just one example it's the

one that I'm

to sit in that my group is really vested

in but there are others in renewable

energy in medicine instructional

materials where the science is going to

tell you to move towards a nano that's

where the biggest benefit is but if

we're going to do that the scientists of

today and tomorrow are going to need new

tools tools just like the ones I

described and if the beauty of sign and

don't need chemistry it's a point they

won't need chemistry and the beauty of

science is that once you develop these

new tools they're out there I mean

they're out there forever and anyone

anywhere can pick them up and use them

use them and help to deliver on the

promise of nanotechnology so thank you

so much for your time