The benefits of thinking small
A world of applications where micro and nano meet
Mizzou researcher Shubhra Gangopadhyay designs devices that combine micro- and nanotechnology for military and medical applications. Photos courtesy of Shubhra Gangopadhyay.
Devices seek and destroy tumors in the human body. Weapons deliver powerful shockwaves using unbelievably small materials. Advanced systems convert solar energy into usable electricity.
These things may seem dissimilar, but they have one common element: They all spring from the minds and labs of Mizzou researcher Shubhra Gangopadhyay, her colleagues and her students.
With such ambitious research, Gangopadhyay is no stranger to headlines. The most recent example is a Department of Defense contract, secured with the support of U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, for up to $10 million. It is the second contract with the Department of Defense in under a year for Gangopadhyay, the LaPierre Chair of electrical and computer engineering and head of the International Center for Nano/Micro Systems and Nanotechnology.
Gangopadhyay keeps a keen focus on the big picture even while working with the tiniest of technology. She works in nanotechnology, a field based on the scale of a nanometer — one-billionth of a meter.
Her newest work deals with nanoscale sensors for biological and chemical weapons, which could have a profound effect on soldiers in the field. The project also calls for work on alternative energy.
“How do you convert solar energy into electrical energy?” Gangopadhyay asks. “How do you create energy, store energy and make a whole system from creation to delivery?” If those questions seem to have national importance, that’s by design.
“We try to pick projects that have a major impact,” she says.
Combining the small with the infinitely smaller
Much of Gangopadhyay’s work exists at the intersection between micro- and nanotechnology. For example, a project in 2002 called for the development of a nanomaterial alternative to hazardous lead-based materials used for detonation in weapons.
But Gangopadhyay took it one step further. She integrated that nanomaterial into microchip technology that could control it. Five years later, building upon that work and a 2006 Department of Defense contract, she and her colleagues are fine-tuning a practical device for future military use.
The device delivers shockwaves. In current weapons systems, fuel and oxidizer (think black powder in a firecracker) combine to create an explosion. With Gangopadhyay’s device, slow detonation and dangerous materials give way to a speedier chemical reaction that also would be safer for soldiers. “When we go to nanoscale with this fuel and oxidizer, the chemical reaction is extremely fast,” she says. Tiny amounts of material can release energy in a short time, thereby creating a pressure wave that travels faster than the speed of sound.
Forever seeing the larger possibilities, Gangopadhyay sees applications that extend far beyond the military — to improve and even save lives. “We are taking the same technology and using it for biomedical applications for drug delivery, for kidney stone removal and cancer cell destruction,” she says.
One microchip-controlled shockwave could quickly and precisely deliver drugs to a cancerous point in the body. Another could help to open up cancer cells to the drug. Hypothetically, this process could destroy entire tumors. The same principles apply to kidney stones and other growths, too.
“People are working on similar devices,” Gangopadhyay says. “Harvard Medical School has been working on this for several years, but their devices are large and very expensive. Our devices will be small and digitally controlled through microchip technology. You can put millions of them on the same microchip.”
An idea worth its weight in nanogold
Gangopadhyay’s list of projects is long and growing. In addition to alternative energy, weapons and medical devices, she and her colleagues work to perfect nanoscale gold particles. Such particles, small even by nanoscale standards, could be “functionalized” by researchers at Mizzou and elsewhere for any number of purposes: memory storage for computers, biological applications and more.
To Gangopadhyay, such lofty goals are crucial when working in the competitive (and therefore innovative) research university environment. Slight improvements on someone else’s work at some other university are never enough. You have to be revolutionary.
“That’s what we are trying to do,” she says. “Pick a few areas and really go for it.”