Veeco setting up nanotechnology centre in India

Veeco, the $400 million US-based supplier of instrumentation for nanoscale applications, is setting up a nanotechnology centre at the Jawarharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore. The centre is being setup under the guidance of reputed Indian scientist C N R Rao.

Nanotechnology is best explained with this example - Today's manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level. Casting, grinding, milling on semiconductor chips move atoms in great thundering statistical herds.

It's like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks with boxing gloves on your hands. While, one can push the LEGO blocks into great heaps and pile them up, one can't really snap them together the way one would like.

In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves. We'll be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature easily, inexpensively and in most of the ways permitted by the laws of physics.

This will be essential if we are to continue the revolution in computer hardware beyond about the next decade, and will also let us fabricate an entire new generation of products that are cleaner, stronger, lighter, and more precise. Veeco, among others, supplies instruments which help semiconductor fabricating unit develop the next generation chips.

Veeco has supplied atomic force microscope and optical profiliers to the centre in Bangalore which will be used by scientists in material science research. These equipment will be used in understanding the properties and components of scores of materials and how best these materials can be put to use in the day to day world.

According to a spokesperson for JNCASR, Veeco has donated these equipment to the centre, which will help Veeco in developing next generation of equipment.

Said John Bulman, executive vice-president (worldwide sales & foreign operations), Veeco said: "As a company, we know C N R Rao pretty well and it is apt that our high-end equipment will be used under his guidance here in India. This research segment is a growing market for us with over 7,000 instruments installed at universities, scientific organisations, nanoscience centres and in industrial sites worldwide."

He added that Veeco will look at the possibilities of a research centre in India. "The Asia-Pacific market is growing significantly and with Indian research on a high-growth curve, we expect a total sales of $6-$8 million by next year here," Bulman noted.