Nanogen's new nanotechnology patent relates to a nanofabrication technology that combines an electric field assisted manufacturing platform and programmable self-assembling nanostructures (for example, DNA building blocks) for the fabrication of a wide range of unique higher-order nano and microscale devices, structures and materials.
The nanofabrication platform and process has a whole raft of applications that include producing nanoscale electronic and photonic devices and structures; assembly of nanostructures and submicron components onto silicon wafers and other materials; integration of nanostructures within preformed microelectronic and optoelectronic structures; production of nanoparticles (for example, photonic crystals, nanospheres and quantum dots); and fabrication of selectively addressable DNA nanoarray substrates and materials.
The patent represents a unique nanofabrication technology that combines the best aspects of top-down microfabrication processes with bottom-up biological self-assembly processes for producing novel nanodevices and nanostructures.
The European Patent, numbered 0943158B1, "Affinity Based Self-Assembly Systems and Devices for Photonic and Electronic Applications," is similar to US Patent 6,652,808, the parent of a series of patent applications.
Nanotechnology offer immense technological promise for the future. Nanotechnology is defined as a projected technology based on a generalized ability to build objects to complex atomic specifications.
Nanotechnology generally means an atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule control for organising and building complex structures all the way to the macroscopic level. Nanotechnology is a bottom-up approach, in contrast to a top-down strategy like present lithographic techniques used in the semiconductor and integrated circuit industries.
The success of nanotechnology may be based on the development of programmable self-assembling molecular units and molecular level machine tools, so-called assemblers, which will enable the construction of a wide range of molecular structures and devices.