nanotechnology

Nanotechnology offers great potentials for improved product properties and innovative functionalities which have to be considered in the product development in an early stage and compared with product requirements. In practice, a gap is to be recognised between nanotechnology and product development. An approach to close the gap and to improve the interoperability is to define a common language based on a functional-based view. The formalisation and mapping of the functions uses semantic nets and ontologies in order to allow a dynamic expanding and machine readability. Thus, applications and nanotechnology will be linked with the objective of generation new product ideas by nanotechnology.

The development of faster and more powerful computers has led to virtual flood of digital data. Over the decades capacity of data storage devices has continued to multiply. At the same time the dimensions of these digital silos have even become smaller. Year after year better devices and finer write-read-heads are developed. The magnetic bit domains became smaller and smaller. Until one day - they are no bigger than an atom. By using spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy - a method of nanotechnology - it is possible today to determine the individual magnetic orientation of single atoms on surfaces, which means to read magnetic information atom by atom. If the same instrument could be used to write magnetic information in adjacent atoms, it would be possible to store the entire world literature on a space of a postage stamp. This is in the focus of research at the University of Hamburg.

Analysis systems for petrochemistry and gas analysis, process control and surveillance of environment as well as in biotechnology and medicine systems are promising fields of application for micro and nano technologies. Such micro analysis systems combine low cost of investment, installation and use with precise and fast measurements at low consumption of probe and energy. For a successful introduction of such systems, however, these technologies have to be incorporated throughout the complete system, otherwise the advantages of high integration density, low cost of fabrication at high functionality will not be obtained. Various such micro analysis systems are presented e.g. a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and an infrared measurement system.