The young fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology are blurring the line between science fiction and real science. Just as many respected scientists and engineers of the 19th century believed the idea of human flight was impossible, today nanoscience is making scientists rethink what is possible.

"Building artificial molecular machines and getting them to operate is where airplanes were a century ago," said J. Fraser Stoddart, director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), who holds UCLA's Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences. Scientists are on the brink of a new revolution at the nanoscale.

"Breakthroughs are occurring at the atomic level that will stimulate the creation of new businesses and jobs in fields as diverse as health care, manufacturing, information technology, homeland security, environmental protection, and multimedia entertainment," said Tony Chan, dean of Physical Sciences.

A joint enterprise of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, scientists in the CNSI explore the power and potential of manipulating structures atom-by-atom to engineer new materials, devices and systems that will dramatically change virtually every aspect of our technology. Nanosystems is science done at the scale of a nanometer--one-billionth of a meter, or 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of a single human hair. Researchers are discovering ways to combine biological and engineered components to create materials and devices with unique combinations of properties.

Stoddart said the CNSI will "create a corridor between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara that will become a hub of invention and innovation across an enormous breadth of disciplines, where size on the nanoscale will be a unifying theme for creative thinking and achievement."

The physical sciences play a critical role in nanoscience. "For any nanomaterial that you want to make, you have to understand the chemistry first," said Richard B. Kaner, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and materials science and engineering, whose internationally- renowned research in materials chemistry has led to several patents. "Chemistry is certainly central to nanoscience, as well as science in general."

Said Heather Maynard, a UCLA chemist who also holds the Howard Reiss Career Development Chair: "What I find so exciting about nanotechnology, especially at UCLA, is that it encompasses many disciplines--people from chemistry, physics, mathematics, life sciences, engineering, and medicine working together."

"Here at UCLA, we can walk over to the medical school or engineering to brainstorm new ideas," said Maynard. "We can make new materials for nanotechnology--working with engineers, doctors and life scientists--that could result in improved products."

Fraser Stoddart: Exploring the Realm of the Scientist, the Engineer and the Artist In addition to being director of the CNSI, Fraser Stoddart is among the world's most distinguished chemists. The New York Times praised Stoddart's recent creation of an artificial molecular machine that functions like a nanoelevator as an "elegant" work of "nanoscale engineering."

Stoddart develops unique molecules, often involving interlocking rings, that are critical to the success of molecular computers that could be much cheaper, smaller and more energy-efficient than today's silicon-based computers.

Stoddart and his research team are working with more than a half-dozen different kinds of molecular switches, each with its own unique characteristics. They also explore a wide range of nano-related topics including chemical sensors, nanoelectronics, mechanically interlocked molecules, and molecular machines, to name just a few.

Stoddart's tiny world is as much the realm of the engineer--or even the artist--as it is of the scientist.

Earlier this year, postdoctoral scholar Jovica Badjic and Stoddart reported in the journal Science that they designed and built the most sophisticated artificial nanomachine yet: the world's tiniest "elevator"--a molecular platform on three legs that can be commanded to move up and down between two levels.

"Such nanoscale robotic devices could find use in slow-release drug delivery systems and in the control of chemical reactions within nanofluidic systems conducted in laboratories on a chip," said Badjic, the lead author of the study, who in March was one of five recipients of a UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research.

"I liken Southern California today to Paris in 1900, which was the place to go if you were an artist," Stoddart said. "When I was working in England in the '90s, I felt that the place to make things happen as a scientist was Southern California, and I have been proved right."

Richard Kaner: Creating Nano Materials Materials chemist Richard Kaner, who has won numerous national awards for research excellence, still keeps the first crystals he grew as a college freshman.

In his research in inorganic and materials chemistry, Kaner focuses on the design of new high-temperature materials and their synthesis by new chemical methods. He discovered, for example, a new method to make high-temperature ceramics in a few seconds that previously took days or even weeks.

He is studying electronic applications to see whether the nanofibers can be used for electronic nanowires in computers, for example. Kaner's nanofibers look promising for computer memory.

"Some day, you will walk into your doctor's office and breathe on a small card that will tell your doctor whether you may have diseases that should be treated," said Kaner, who produces large numbers of tiny nanofibers that could potentially be used on that card.

Kaner's research team creates sensors, which could have many uses. After producing sensors for nearly 20 years, Kaner has found that a version he created from nanofibers is much more responsive and effective than the pre-nano sensors. Kaner was the first chemist to produce pure polyaniline nanofibers, which can be used for sensors--findings he published last year.

This research has homeland security applications as well. Nanofibers potentially could be used for detecting trace amounts of biological and chemical weapons, and could be placed at airports and many other sensitive locations. "It's dirt cheap to produce them," said Kaner, who was recently notified that he will receive a research grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Kaner and Stoddart have written joint proposals to use Stoddart's molecules to improve Kaner's sensors.

"We want to understand the chemistry, but everything we do also has an applications goal in mind," Kaner said. "We collaborate with companies and engineers that make devices."

Kaner works on making composite materials with H. Thomas Hahn, UCLA's Raytheon Professor of Manufacturing Engineering, and chair of UCLA's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. "The goal," Kaner said, "is to make composite materials that are better than existing composites."

It was not until the mid-1980s and into the 1990s that instruments were available to allow scientists to work on the nanoscale. Through a National Science Foundation training grant program, Kaner's laboratory was able to purchase a field emission scanning electron microscope, which enables his team to image down to one nanometer resolution. "This kind of instrument wasn't available 10 or 15 years ago," Kaner said. "We were making nanomaterials well before we were able to image them properly."

Heather Maynard: Exploiting "Bio-Molecules" Like Kaner and Stoddart, chemist Heather Maynard conducts research that could produce enormously important new products and devices. She and her research team are making new natural and synthetic hybrid materials.

"We want to make useful materials," Maynard said. "If we combine man-made plastics with molecules that are found in the human body, then we can make new materials that might be applicable as therapeutics or sensors.

"We're interested in non-invasively identifying cancer with sensitive detectors that would be capable of sensing in the urine of cancer patients minute amounts of proteins produced by solid tumors. Nanotechnology can help with this early detection of tumors." In addition, nanotechnology may also be able to tell whether cancer treatments are working effectively.

Maynard's research group is combining synthetic polymers, which are generally plastic, with "bio-molecules"--molecules that are in the body, such as proteins, peptides and sugars. By combining the two types of molecules, she is able to obtain desirable properties of each, such as the recognition capabilities of a protein with the structural stability of the plastic.

"We have been successful at developing methods to make materials for nanotechnology, and we are delving into applications," Maynard said. "We have developed the chemistry to control where we attach the polymers to the bio-molecules."

Applications could conceivably include clothing that recognizes a problem in the environment, such as a biological agent.

While endowed chairs typically honor distinguished senior professors, Maynard is the recipient of an endowed chair--a rarity for a scholar so early in her career. The chair was endowed by John McTague, a former UCLA chemistry professor noted for his research on the dynamics of condensed matter. McTague named the endowed chair for Howard Reiss, a UCLA chemistry professor and recipient of many national honors for excellence in research. Maynard is the first scholar to hold the Reiss Chair, which provides unrestricted funding for an exceptional assistant professor.

"It's a wonderful privilege, particularly since Howard Reiss and John McTague are renowned scientists," said Maynard, who joined UCLA's faculty in 2002. "I am honored to be associated with two superb chemists."