12/6/2012 2:43:00 PM

Popular Mechanics: Look Inside a Futuristic Nanotech Lab

Popular Mechanics

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, or CNSE, at the State University of New York at Albany is one of the country’s biggest centers for pushing the boundaries of nanotechnology to build ever-smaller computer chips and electrical systems.

Physicist Richard Feynman famously said that there’s plenty of room at the bottom. Room to build complex structures, machines, and computing engines at the size of individual molecules and even atoms.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the NanoTech Complex, which is run by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, or CNSE, at the State University of New York at Albany. Sprawling over more than a half-dozen buildings in three locations, the $14 billion facility includes 800,000 square feet packed with advanced laboratories and computer-chip manufacturing equipment. Here, about 2600 researchers, engineers, and technicians working for the U.S. military, research institutions from around the world, and the world’s top semiconductor-makers are pushing their way into ever smaller realms in the quest for faster and more energy-efficient computers, micro-electromechanical systems, sensors than can be embedded in anything from a helicopter rotor blade to a human tooth, and more.

Read more