Materials – Interview

Interview with Harry Kroto

What's your definition of nanotechnology?

Kroto: Molecules that do things.

That's it?

Kroto: Well, I'm thinking of molecules with functions. You see, the real advances are in neuroscience and the application of nanotechnology to produce molecules that have interesting properties. Key molecules such as haemoglobin illustrate the sorts of things we might be able to make in the future.

What excites you most about nanotechnology?

Kroto: It has the possibility for greening our technology. If we can produce nanotubes, which are incredibly strong, light materials, we could produce cars and perhaps aeroplanes that would require far less power.

Are there other areas where you see promising rewards for research?

Kroto: Yes. For instance, molecular computing with nanotechnology. This would open the door to supercomputers that would run on tiny batteries and microchips a million times smaller than the ones we have now. That would put all the knowledge of the world in your pocket. These materials exist, but we are still a long way off from being able to exploit them.

How long do you think that will take?

Kroto: It took 60 years for James Watt to put a condenser on the steam engine. And that was trivial by comparison with what will be required to develop some of these new concepts. So a lot of work has to be done.

When will revolutionary nanotechnology applications come to market?

Kroto:It might take between 20 and 40 years for the truly revolutionary ones. But I don't know. It is very hard to foresee what's going to happen. People didn't foresee the Internet, people didn't foresee the application of the laser for eye surgery. In this respect, you're talking to the wrong guy. I conduct fundamental research. I discovered C60 with my colleagues not by looking for it, but by doing a little experiment on chemistry in stars and interstellar space. In my science I'm not looking for applications.

What are you working on now?

Kroto: We have made significant progress in efficiently generating nanostructures of many kinds, including nanotubes out of carbon and other inorganic materials, by pyrolyzing selected precursors. We are now able to generate aligned nanotube bundles of uniform length and diameter, as well as metal nanowires using benzene-based aerosols in conjunction with metallocenes like ferrocene, an iron-containing organic molecule. These novel materials have extraordinary physical and chemical properties. They may be useful, for example, in manufacturing super-strong composite materials and novel electronic or optical devices such as field emission sources or ultra-thin TV displays.

Would you say that nanotechnology is the most promising area of materials science?

Kroto: Frankly, yes.

Self-replicating nanobots—could that ever be a possibility?

Kroto: I would not say that that could not happen. Self-replicating organisms have developed accidentally in the biosphere. I suspect one day we will be able to emulate some of the smallest organisms or at least modify them in some way.

Should steps be taken to keep this from happening?

Kroto: Of course. But nanotechnology is not the only technology involved. All powerful technologies have tremendous potential to be of benefit to society—or to cause harm. Nanotechnology per se may or may not have the capacity to do more harm than other technologies such as nuclear weapons. But if people say they don't want technology, then we will go back to the time when a quarter of children died at the age of five and people worked in the fields 12 hours a day just to survive. The technologies are here and society has to decide how it wants to use them. The problem is that although our technologies have developed rapidly, our social behaviour has remained pretty much the same since the Stone Age.

Interview by Norbert Aschenbrenner