Nokia noses around nanotech

NOKIA'S ANNOUCEMENT of a $60 million tie-up with Britain's University of Cambridge for joint R&D into nanotechnology belies a much deeper interest in the subject than might firstappear.

It is generally known, for example, that Nokia's arch rival, Motorola, has already created a nano-emissive flat-panel display. Plus Motorola has other nanotech-related initiatives including one in electronics.

Nokia has been rather coy about what benefits it might derive from R&D into nanotechnology. Dr Tapani Ryhanen, who heads Nokia's global research into nanotechnology, commented, "Nanotechnology long ago left science fiction movies for the laboratory and, more recently, we saw the first commercial applications.

The techniques we are developing really bring us a toolkit for working with the processes of nature at a very basic level - the level of molecules - in a safe and controlled way."

So that's smaller handsets is it, then?

Anyway, Finland's leading company is sponsoring an event called Nanotech Northern Europe 2007 later this month ( March 27th-29th 2007) in Helsinki. You'd better get your skates on if you want to register to attend.

The significant part about this conference is that there is at least one thread on the subject of nanotechnology commercialisation included a talk given by Malcolm Wilkinson, from the UK's Technology For Industry. µ

L'INQ
Nanotech conference