Promising innovations from warfare to Mars

Some day soon, members of the American armed forces who have to fight in a sweltering desert climate may wear suits fitted with tiny, lightweight heat pumps to keep them cool. In the future, microreactors the size of a cigarette lighter might run a laptop computer for weeks, instead of using batteries that die in hours. Miniscule medical devices would manufacture chemicals such as insulin right inside the human body. Moreover, humans may travel to Mars.

If any of these things become possible, it will be because of the innovations being created with microtechnology. In the past 20 years, advances in microelectronics helped usher in the Information Age, computers, and the Internet. In coming decades, advances in this field may affect everything from automobiles to medicine, home heating, pollution control, and national defense.

"In the past, anything 'micro' tended to come out of the fields of electrical engineering or computer science, and was made out of silicon or computer chips," explains Kevin Drost, a professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State University, Corvallis. "But there's so much more to microtechnology than that, and the breakthrough products of the future may evolve from mechanical and chemical engineering."

Researchers at Oregon State and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., believe the recently formed Microproducts Breakthrough Institute could become an international leader in developing scientific advances in microtechnology, create spinoff companies and jobs, and make the Pacific Northwest a national center of some of the most exciting new technologies in the world. The current initiative, Drost notes, began about a decade ago, when it became apparent to researchers that very high rates of heat and mass transfer could be achieved if processes functioned at the extraordinarily small sizes of 10-100 microns--around the thickness of a human hair.

A heat exchanger working at these sizes, for instance, has about five times the efficiency of one that uses larger components. Such small sizes also lend themselves to chemical and biological systems, in which temperature, pressure, or nutrients can be controlled precisely. The small sizes and precision depend not so much on exotic new materials, but on innovative fabrication techniques with some tried-and-true materials such as copper, aluminum, and stainless steel--along with a few more-modern polymers, plastics, and ceramics.

"These processes are also amenable to mass production and scales of economy," points out Drost. "That's one reason it's so exciting. These technologies are close enough that we can think about developing working products [as well as] creating new businesses and jobs."

Working heat pumps, for example, have been around for decades. They are a fairly efficient form of heating used in millions of homes. Imagine, as an alternative to a conventional noisy system, many miniaturized heat pumps so small and quiet that one could be placed inside the wall in each room, allowing individually controlled heating and cooling. This eliminates energy losses in ductwork, performs at an even higher efficiency, and dramatically reduces installation costs. This single product might save billions of dollars in energy costs and revolutionize home and business air conditioning around the world--and that's just a start! "We predict that 10 years from now you'll be seeing microtechnology products in your daily lives," Drost indicates.

Other projects either under way or to be considered at some point in the future include:

* A biosensor the size of a lapel pin that detects chemical and biological warfare agents as well as other environmental toxins like E. coli.

* Chemical reactors being created for new environmental applications, such as pen-sized reactors capable of cleaning up underground toxic waste by converting it into inert components.

* Heat-actuated air conditioning units to cool automobiles using waste engine heat.

* Water-cooled microchips with tiny "veins" etched into the surface to transfer heat and allow for even-faster computer chips.

* Tiny devices that produce onsite small volumes of hazardous materials used by industry, eliminating the need for transport.

* Microprocessing fuel plants sent to Mars to provide astronauts with the necessary fuel for a return trip to Earth.

* Small systems to produce hydrogen for fuel cells in automobiles, changing a power plant that now fills the back of a pickup truck into a unit the size of a briefcase.

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