Nanotech Lures Bankers, VCs With Promise of $1 Trillion Market

In a windowless lab tucked inside International Business Machines Corp.’s Almaden Research Center south of San Jose, California, a scanning tunneling microscope stretches almost to the ceiling, dwarfing Andreas Heinrich.

Amid the snaking wires and the cut AriZona iced tea can that insulates a protruding pipe, Heinrich is viewing a particle thousands of times tinier than the width of a human hair.

“This is about looking at the properties of a single atom,” says Heinrich, wearing a T-shirt, jeans and slip-on shoes. “We’re starting with the smallest components and building upward.”

Heinrich is experimenting with ways to create semiconductors and data storage devices. Venture capitalists, lured by potential breakthroughs in electronics, medicine and textiles, are heading to the labs in search of inventions based on nanotechnology, the study and manipulation of particles smaller than 100 nanometers. A single nanometer is equal to one-billionth of a meter.

Full Story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ayHbTn8GgpVo&refer=exclusive_to_bloomberg#

(Many thanks to Bill Sellers for passing this along. Russ)