The Department of Energy took another step toward its goal of creating five state-of-the-art nanotechnology research centers with the announcement in June that Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, will receive up to $85 million over the next four or five years to build the Center for Functional Nanomaterials. With the approval to proceed with the Brookhaven facility, DOE has three of its planned nanotechnology centers in the design phase, one at which construction is about to begin, and the fifth in the proposal stage.
“Nanoscience holds the potential for a veritable second industrial revolution,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a gathering at Brookhaven on 14 June. When completed, the center will be located next to the National Synchrotron Light Source and “will design new classes of materials to boost energy efficiency, new solar energy devices, and superconducting materials for vastly improved energy transmission,” Abraham said. The preliminary cost estimate...
