Socks that don’t stink, windows that never get dirty and fabrics that don’t stain are some of the hooks educators and journalists use to get people interested in nanotechnology.

But how much of the nanotechnology hype is real, and what kind of progress are we making toward building and using miniature machines?

Jacqueline Krim is a professor of physics, specializing in materials physics and nanoscale science, and heads the University’s nanotribology lab — which means she studies friction at a very small scale. Here, she brings us up to date on the state of nanotechnology.

Technician: First, what exactly is nanotechnology?

Jacqueline Krim: It’s the use of machinery and technical processes at the nanoscale. A nanometer is 10-9 meters, so if you chop a cross section of a single human hair into a thousand pieces, we’re talking about little machines at that scale.

Technician: How will they be used? Will we really make socks that don’t stink?

JK: Electronics and communication are areas that are very much targeted for nanotechnology. Drug delivery, medical devices and energy issues are also likely to benefit.

We really have to decide what’s important. Socks that don’t stink aren’t important to me, although they could be very important to textiles researchers. You have to ask, is this really so important that, as a society, we’re going to devote all these resources to solving this problem? Because remember, if people are working on socks, they won’t be solving some other problem.

Technician: Are there any examples of nanomachines in use today?

JK: They’re under development. Right now, we are using some technology that has a single nanoscale dimension, like coatings that are only one to two molecules thick. But the concept of nanotechnology refers to machines that are nano in all three dimensions. These do exist. Every day there are new devices being demonstrated in laboratories under very controlled settings, but how long it takes for that to reach the commercial market is a whole different question.

Technician: So what is the time frame for seeing this kind of development?

JK: We should be thinking on the long term here, thinking ahead 10 to 30 years. That seems like a long time, and yet if we don’t do it, somebody else probably will. This is something that’s difficult in this country. We’re very shortsighted. Nanotechnology is real, but it’s long term.

Technician: How long has the concept of nanotechnology been around?

JK: Since the late 1980s when we got probe microscopes that can image individual molecules and move them around on a surface. That’s also when computer technology took off and could make these beautiful color images of atoms, which lit our collective imagination and inspired all kinds of imaginative designs for machines.

Technician: How do you make a molecule-scale machine?

JK: There are several proposed ways. One way is bottom-up. The probe is used to push atoms around and assemble the machines. That’s pretty inefficient. With the top-down method, you remove material using a nanodevice. With self-assembling you try to have all the materials combine and attach in a way that you could get a structure without having to go in and assemble it.

Technician: What challenges do scientists face in making nanotechnology a reality?

JK: I would say number of researchers. We do not have the number of people trained in this sort of field yet to develop and commercialize all the ideas that are out there that could work.

There is only one physicist or chemist for about every 100 engineers, and our country has not been attracting many people overall to study science and engineering. We might have the ideas for nanotechnology, but I can really envision another country developing it and profiting from it. We’re not behind, but we need people to do it.

Technician: How is nanotechnology inherently different from larger scale machines?

JK: The physical laws governing these systems are not the same as our everyday world, so we can’t just go in there and study them. We have to study the physical laws that govern them first. Things behave differently at that scale because as they get smaller, the forces that act on them do not necessarily get smaller. If I lick my finger and touch this little piece of paper, I have a hard time shaking it off. If I do the same thing to this chair, nothing happens. I’m using the same force on both, but the chair’s bigger. Now imagine what that same force would do to a little nanomachine.

Thermal motion — the vibration of molecules — is also a big issue. You don’t see the molecules vibrating in this chair, but if you go inside it, down on the nanoscale, they’re all shaking.

Technician: What aspect of nanotechnology are you studying in your own lab?

JK: We’re looking at the atomic scale origins of friction. We look at how atoms and molecules flex and vibrate and how that scales up to the friction we see on an everyday basis. We’re developing the knowledge based upon which nanotechnology can be built.

We’re also working on a nanoswitch that will close a circuit. The company that makes them can get some of their switches to work for a very long time but when they make 100 switches, there aren’t enough of the switches working from the outset for this to be a very good commercial seller. So we’re really focusing on the physics of what’s happening at the contact tip, trying to understand why they fail. If you have stray atoms here and there from air pollution or variations in the process of making these very small machines, it doesn’t work.

Technician: Are there any health or environmental issues associated with creating these miniature machines?

JK: They should be the same health risks as everything else. Certain small objects like dust particles and toxins are in your body every day, and your body attacks those. It’s constantly trying to get rid of them. Certainly our bodies will attack nanomachines, just like any kind of drug delivery or ordinary thing you’re putting in your system. You have to choose biologically friendly materials to build them, but there’s nothing special about the materials in nanodevices that would distinguish them from any other kind of medical issue.