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Seated inside one of China's most advanced science laboratories, two PhD students dressed from head to toe in protective white suits listen intently to Mariah Carey's pop classic Hero. It is not the song, but the millimetre-thin, transparent strip making the sound that captures their attention - a nano-speaker they hope will revolutionise where, and how, we listen to music.
"This is cutting edge," says Professor Shoushan Fan, director of the nanotechnology lab at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Without a cone, magnet or amplifier, the speaker, which looks little more than a slim film of see-through plastic, can be used to transform almost any surface into an auditorium. It is made from nanocarbon tubes which, when heated, make the air around them vibrate, producing the sound. "The speaker's bendy and flexible," says Fan. "You could stick it to the back window of your car and play music from there."
"The overall trends are irrefutable," says Dr James Wilsdon, director of the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society, and author of the Demos report "China: The Next Science Superpower?". "China is snapping at the heels of the most developed nations, in terms of research and investment, in terms of active scientists in the field, in terms of publications and in terms of patents."
China now produces more papers on nanotech than any other nation. Nanotech plants have sprung up in cities from Beijing in the north to Shenzhen in the south, working on products including exhaust-absorbing tarmac and carbon nanotube-coated clothes that can monitor health. Last month, researchers from Nanjing University and colleagues from New York University unveiled a two-armed nanorobot that can alter genetic code. It enables the creation of new DNA structures, and could be turned into a factory for assembling the building blocks of new materials.
Small-scale war
China, like the US, is also assumed to be focusing much of its R&D investment on military applications. "There's a lot of concern about the use of nanotech with weapons," says Wilsdon. "I'm sure China is spending significant amounts of their R&D budget on military uses."
Tim Harper, founder of the nanotech consultancy Cientifica Ltd, says carbon nanotube composites could be used to strengthen armour, that non-scratch nano-coatings are being developed for cockpits and researchers are trying to find a nano replacement for military-use batteries. "The US is working on all of these things, so I'm sure the Chinese are doing much the same," he says.
The global nanotechnology market could top $2tn by 2012, predicts Tim Harper, founder of the nanotech consultancy CMP Cientifica. "What we see is a big take-off in 2011, and by 2012 the industry is really going to be booming," he says. "We've been pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the nanotech industry for the last decade and we're finally getting to the point where we're seeing products being manufactured and sold."
Harper predicts that by 2010, areas of nanotechnology and biology will have merged, setting in motion the production of a wealth of new drugs and clinical equipment (such as the vials of nanomaterials for use in health products, clothes and cosmetics). His research sees nanotech pharmaceutical and healthcare products worth an estimated $3.2tn by 2012, with military-use nanotech products taking 14% of the total market and worth $40bn.
Nanotech products for the motor industry will make up a 4% chunk of the market, while nano-foods are likely to corner up to 2%. Nanotech products designed to tackle water, air and soil pollution will also be big business in 2012. "In terms of environmentally beneficial materials, in some ways the Chinese are further along in their thinking than even the US," says Harper. "They are already putting together a system to work out how we can use these technologies for the good of the environment." The US may still lead the nano surge overall, but Harper believes China will be on a par with the EU and US by 2012.
Richard Appelbaum, from the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, puts the global nanotech market figure at $2.6tn by 2014, or 15% of manufacturing output in that year. China, along with 40 other countries including the US, UK and Japan, is investing in nanotechnology "as a major key to global economic competitiveness", he says.
If any one nation succeeds in cornering the giant's share of the market, it "would be sufficient to confer global economic leadership on the country", he adds.
This article is pulished in 2009, dont know whether the situation of nanotech in china has reached the stage it estimated` I'm very intrigered by the nanotech application in defence fields`
i still think it takes time to become innovative. any start-up companies need to deal with survival first than innovability. it without a doubt applies to nanotech industry as well. but those university labs have head start than those private chinese nano companies in beijing or shanghai`China as an Innovator
Measured purely in terms of years, nanotech in Japan and the West does not have much of a head start against China, especially considering that China can leverage the basic research already done elsewhere. On the other hand, technology in any highly advanced field evolves at an exponential rate, which can make it hard for emerging players like China to catch up. This may help explain the conventional wisdom, which is that China excels as a manufacturing country and as a market for goods, but not as an innovator.
Presented with this belief, Accelergy's Sprenger responded simply: "We believe conventional wisdom is about to change." If China's emerging nanotech sector hopes to compete on a global scale in the next six years, it will need to invest heavily in research today--and it appears to be doing just that. As I mentioned earlier, when adjusted for exchange rates and purchasing power parity, China's investment in nanotech research runs a close second to the U.S. Much of that largesse is going toward construction of 33 nanotech centers across Asia, but significant portions are also funding centers already in operation like the National Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology in Shanghai and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China in Beijing.
In April 2005, China became the first country to issue national standards for nanotechnology, thereby laying the groundwork for international standards and improving its clout in the global nanotechnology market. It has been well-documented that China is producing more scientists and engineers, thus gaining competitive advantages in innovation and discovery in nanoscience. Partnerships among government agencies, academia, and private sectors are crucial for fruitfully developing, utilizing, and standardizing nanomaterials.
