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The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

Graphic: Sharpening a Laser Beam to Create a WeaponThe largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.

The laser research was described by federal officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political sensitivity. The White House has recently sought to play down the issue of space arms, fearing it could become an election-year liability.

Indeed, last week Republicans and Democrats on a House Armed Services subcommittee moved unanimously to cut research money for the project in the administration’s budget for the 2007 fiscal year. While Republicans on the panel would not discuss their reasons for the action, Congressional aides said it reflected a bipartisan consensus for moving cautiously on space weaponry, a potentially controversial issue that has yet to be much debated.

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Advances made in the field of nanotechnology could be applied in the development of a new generation of chemical and biological weapons, writes Andy Oppenheimer.

Current and future developments in nanotechnology—science and engineering on the scale of nanometres or billionths of a metre—may pave the way for new types of weapons. The new technology will have a profound impact on new materials, electronic devices, chemical, biological and mechanical systems and provides the potential for future weapons development. Previous articles on Janes Chem-Bio Web discussed the potential of nanotechnology being used for a fourth generation of nuclear weapons. This article deals with its potential to enable future production of novel chemical and biological weapons (CBW).

Dual-use medical advances

Nanotechnology has great potential in the fields of biotechnology and medicine. Bio-nanotechnology is concerned with molecular-scale properties and production of materials and devices including tissue and cellular engineering scaffolds, molecular motors and biomolecules for sensors and drug delivery. While bio-nanotechnological products are seen as around 10 years off, medical application is promising, with intense research being conducted in disease diagnosis, drug delivery and molecular imaging. Medical-related products containing nanoparticles are currently on the market in the US. DNA-based geometrical structures (including artificial crystals) and functioning DNA-based nanomachines are currently being fabricated.

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OROGRANDE, N.M.  —  The Army unveiled parts of its high-tech Future Combat Systems on Thursday in a mock raid on a fictitious village, demonstrating equipment that aims to make soldiers’ work safer.

The late morning exercise was the first public glimpse of a series of camera mounted-robots, small unmanned planes, radios that can send text messages and other equipment that Army and defense officials say will make combat safer for U.S. personnel.

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Bacteria often get bad press, with those found in water often linked to illness and disease. But researchers at The University of Nottingham are using these tiny organisms alongside the very latest membrane filtration techniques to improve and refine water cleaning technology.

These one-celled organisms eat the contaminants present in water — whether it is being treated prior to industrial use or even for drinking — in a process called bioremediation.

The water is then filtered through porous membranes, which function like a sieve. However, the holes in these sieves are microscopic, and some are so small they can only be seen at the nanoscale. Pore size in these filters can range from ten microns — ten thousandths of a millimetre — to one nanometre — a millionth of a millimetre.

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Mechatronics is the synergistic combination of mechanical engineering (”mecha” for mechanisms, i.e., machines that ‘move’),electronics engineering (”tronics” for electronics), and software engineering. The purpose of this interdisciplinary engineering field is the study of automata from an engineering perspective and serves the purposes of controlling advanced hybrid systems.

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Gaithersburg, MD — Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made the first direct measurements of the infinitesimal expansion and collapse of thin polymer films used in the manufacture of advanced semiconductor devices. It’s a matter of only a couple of nanometers, but it can be enough to affect the performance of next-generation chip manufacturing. The NIST measurements, detailed in a new paper,* offer a new insight into the complex chemistry that enables the mass production of powerful new integrated circuits. The smallest critical features in memory or processor chips include transistor “gates.” In today’s most advanced chips, gate length is about 45 nanometers, and the industry is aiming for 32-nanometer gates. To build the nearly one billion transistors in modern microprocessors, manufacturers use photolithography, the high-tech, nanoscale version of printing technology. The semiconductor wafer is coated with a thin film of photoresist, a polymer-based formulation, and exposed with a desired pattern using masks and short wavelength light (193 nm). The light changes the solubility of the exposed portions of the resist, and a developer fluid is used to wash the resist away, leaving the pattern which is used for further processing.

Exactly what happens at the interface between the exposed and unexposed photoresist has become an important issue for the design of 32-nanometer processes. Most of the exposed areas of the photoresist swell slightly and dissolve away when washed with the developer. However this swelling can induce the polymer formulation to separate (like oil and water) and alter the unexposed portions of the resist at the edges of the pattern, roughening the edge. For a 32-nanometer feature, manufacturers want to hold this roughness to at most about two or three nanometers.

Industry models of the process have assumed a fairly simple relationship in which edge roughness in the exposed “latent” image in the photoresist transfers directly to the developed pattern, but the NIST measurements reveal a much more complicated process. By substituting deuterium-based heavy water in the chemistry, the NIST team was able to use neutrons to observe the entire process at a nanometer scale. They found that at the edges of exposed areas the photoresist components interact to allow the developer to penetrate several nanometers into the unexposed resist. This interface region swells up and remains swollen during the rinsing process, collapsing when the surface is dried. The magnitude of the swelling is significantly larger than the molecules in the resist, and the end effect can limit the ability of the photoresist to achieve the needed edge resolution. On the plus side, say the researchers, their measurements give new insight into how the resist chemistry could be modified to control the swelling to optimal levels.

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Bellingham, WA — Micro- and nanolithography practitioners will share their up-to-the-minute research results and latest innovations at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, CA, USA, in February. Topics range from state-of-the-art lithographic tools and technologies, resists, metrology, and materials characterization, to design and process integration, including progress of extending these technologies or switching to emerging alternatives. The event will be held 24-29 February 2008 in the San Jose Convention Center.

SPIE Advanced Lithography provides a rich networking opportunity for the international community and is known as a forum for high-quality technical presentations. More than 700 papers will be presented in five technical conferences. Of high interest are papers on nanoimprint, electron-beam direct write, parallel e-beam systems, extreme-UV systems, directed self assembly, molecular resists, EUV resists, double patterning, and high-index immersion lithography.

Three plenary talks are scheduled:

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Redondo Beach, CA — Northrop Grumman Corporation has achieved two milestones that helped prepare the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft for integration of the Northrop Grumman-developed high-energy laser. Both accomplishments contributed to MDA’s success in meeting its fifth and final “Knowledge Point” or milestone for 2007 covering high-power systems integration readiness, continuing recent program progress.

Northrop Grumman’s Space Technology sector completed inspection and refurbishment of the components and parts that compose the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL), a megawatt-class laser the company designed and built for the ABL program. In conjunction with The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA), ABL’s prime contractor, Northrop Grumman also completed extensive engineering drawings for the installation of the laser. The drawings incorporate streamlined processes and other improvements learned during ground tests concluded in 2005.

“These achievements represent outstanding progress toward providing our nation with a mobile, speed-of-light capability to attack ballistic missiles during their boost phase,” said Alexis Livanos, corporate vice president and president of the company’s Space Technology sector.

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A new strategic plan for the work of the National Nanotechnology Initiative has just been released by the interagency Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Technology with support from the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO). The 2007 NNI Strategic Plan describes the vision, goals, and priorities of the NNI to ensure that the United States derives growing economic benefits and improved quality of life for its citizens and remains a global leader in nanotechnology R&D in the years to come.

According to NNCO Director Clayton Teague, periodic reexamination of the NNI Strategic Plan is essential, given the dynamic nature of the field. The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 calls for the NNI Strategic Plan to be updated every third year; the plan just released updates and replaces the December 2004 plan.

“This strategic plan presents an overview of the NNI for the public and will facilitate achievement of the NNI vision by offering guidance for agency leaders, program managers, and the research community in their nanotechnology R&D investments and activities,” said Dr. Teague. He noted that the new plan reflects the consensus of the 25 NNI participating agencies as to the goals and priorities of the NNI and provides a framework within which each agency will carry out its own mission-related nanotechnology programs, as well as a path that will sustain coordination of interagency activities. In addition to specifying high-level goals, the plan identifies activities aimed at accomplishing those goals. The plan also identifies major subject areas, or program component areas (PCAs), in which investments are needed to ensure the success of the initiative. Finally, the plan identifies a number of representative high-impact application opportunities that cut across the NNI program component areas and that align with the competencies and missions of participating agencies.

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