TrendWatcher

Last Night I went to a presentation on Nanotechnology by Dr. James Tour of Rice University at First Presbyterian Church here in Houston. His presentation was aimed at the above average lay person(at least from an educational stand point). He covered Passive Nanotech(no moving parts, coatings, paints, etc), Active nanotech(Nano Trucks, Nano Machines), and Electronic Nanotech(computers, memory, etc.). It was a broad overview and he was mainly trying to give the group a general understanding of Nanotechnology, but he did present a couple of conclusions that I thought were interesting from a trends standpoint.

The first was that passive nanotech is the area for personal investment at the moment. Dr. Tour and his colleagues have been doing a lot of research into carbon nanotubes and they have found a number of practical applications, including making rubber tires 4x stronger with out losing any elasticity.

The second conclusion is that active nanotech is not an area for personal investment at this time but it is a great area for our government to invest in. The technology is in its infancy and the practical applications will not be hitting the market for a large number of years.

The third conclusion was that there are a ton of practical applications for electronic nanotechnology, but that for the next 10 to 15 years development in silicon will continue to outpace what we can do with nano tech. Five years ago he started trying to develop a non memory that would allow for a gig of memory the size of a pen. It was unthinkable for silicon at the time, but now that they are able to make the nano memory at that size, silicon can fit 4GB in the same space. This is also a great area for our government to invest in and in 10 to 15 years it should be profitable for personal investors as well.

Anyone know of any passive nano tech companies? He mentioned that a colleague had started one in Katy.