Nano tech countries

There seems to be absolutely no doubt that national governments, multinationals and generally anyone with a wad of cash is chasing the gold at the end of the Nanotechnology rainbow. Francois D'Aubert the French Governments minister for research has recently stated that funding will increase 150% to €70million. With this investment the French Government has made Nanotechnology a national priority. Most of the funding is being ploughed into the Government funded CEA. This is the industry and Nuclear group based in Grenoble. The Economy and unemployment figures may have something to do with sudden increase. Given that in some regions in the South of France up to 15% of the working population are faced with unemployment, and that due to restrictive taxes many multinationals are moving across French borders to places like Belgium and Switzerland, that perhaps the French see this as a long term escape plan.
But they face huge competition from of all places Germany. Germany currently houses more than half of the nanotechnology companies of Europe, and is only second to the United States in terms of patent applications in the fields of Nanotechnology.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the Tegal Corporation, a leading designer and manufacturer of plasma etch and deposition systems used in the production of integrated circuits and nanotechnology devices, recently announced that it had moved its European headquarters to Thiendorf, near Dresden, from Munich, Germany. All European sales, service and support will be directed out of this new location. In addition, Tegal intends to expand its infrastructure there to support some assembly and test operations.

"Silicon Saxony" as it is now being called is one of the leading locations for R&D in high-end production of microelectronics in Europe. Tegal’s new neighbours will be companies as Infineon, ZMD, AMD and DuPont Photronics. Three Universities of Technology and five Universities of Applied Sciences, along with the highest concentration of public R&D institutes in Germany contribute to a large, highly skilled and affordable work force available to anyone looking to make progress in the field.

So it seems that it just might be un petit peu trop tard for the French government and that Germany will once again become an economic power house of Europe.
Europe itself however, has plenty of competition around the world and the Chinese are certainly no slouches when it comes to jumping onto the nanotech bandwagon. Lets face it they were already on it back in the mid 1980’s when they started funding research into Nano sciences. In the late 90’s they started a national key basic research project ‘Nanomaterial and Nanostructure', to continually support the basic research on nanomaterials such as nanotubes.

China has planned to spend USD250-300 million within the current five-year plan (2001-2005). More aggressive initiatives are about to launch. The National Center for NanoScience and Technology of China (NCNST) is currently being built near the Peking University , Tsinghua University , and the Chinese Academia of Sciences (CAS) and is expected to finish in 2 years. The government has allocated USD33 million for building this National Research Center . But they are actually still way behind other developed countries. The National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China (NCNST, http://www.nanoctr.cn/ ) is a newly established non-profit legal research entity and a state-run technological platform and research center for nanoscience and technology equipped with advanced facilities in nano-fabrication and characterization. After many years of bilateral conferences on Nanotechnology with countries such as Japan and Korea. The NCN now want to host an international conference on Nanotechnology.

The China Nano international conference will be held as a series conferences in China with the support of Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Ministry of Education of China , National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, China Association for Science and Technology , China National Accreditation Board for Laboratories .

Well hope you find the news somewhat useful and interesting and please don’t hesitate to click on my sponsors while you’re here. I’ll be back in nano while.