New consortia of corporations, universities and federal agencies are seeking to accelerate the development in the wide-open field of nanotechnology software -- programs to create and enhance devices with features on the molecular scale.
"The kinds of materials that could be explored at this scale mostly have not been explored experimentally," Scott Kahn, chief science officer at Accelrys, a leader in modeling and simulation programs for nanotechnology, told UPI's Nano World. "This software is a way to explore this vast space of possibility in a directed way, so later experimentation can be focused in a way likely to have a payoff."
The potential benefits of nanotechnology software are dramatic for both research and development.
"It could reduce the development time by half," said Gerhard Klimeck, technical director of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology in West Lafayette, Ind.
In addition, these programs can save millions, leading to a return on investment of $3 to $9 for every dollar spent, according to analyses by IDC, an information technology research firm in Framingham, Mass.
The software takes known mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, optical and magnetic properties of atoms and molecules and runs a gamut of calculations to simulate how they should behave on the level of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. In this way, scientists can run thousands of virtual experiments to see which of them might work best in the real world, instead of wasting time and resources pursuing dead ends.
