Nanotechnology Global Strategies, Industry Trends and Applications phần 3 ppsx

2

Current Status of

Nanotechnology in Korea and

Research into Carbon Nanotubes

Jo-Won Lee1 and Wonbong Choi2

1

Korean National Program for Tera-level Nanodevices and

2

Florida International University

2.1 Introduction

Despite the recent economic uncertainty, enthusiasm to develop high-tech industries

still runs high across the world. Specifically, many advanced countries are putting

aside most of their investment in research projects, since a high value-added

technology can only be obtained through time-consuming and costly research.

Korea is also following this trend. Fortunately, the Korean government, here after

called ‘the government’, has designated nanotechnology (NT) as one of six

important fields that would be the growth engine for the next 10 years. The other

five fields are information technology (IT), biotechnology (BT), environmental

technology (ET), space technology (ST) and contents technology (CT). Back in

July 2001 the government formulated an ambitious ten-year master plan to nurture

NT, which is an initial step to keep up with the global trend in favour of the next￾generation technology. The first part of this chapter gives a detailed description of

the current status of NT in Korea. Among the many activities in Korea, carbon

nanotube research has revealed tremendous potential for future electronic device

Nanotechnology: Global Strategies, Industry Trends and Applications Edited by J. Schulte

# 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ISBN: 0-470-85400-6 (HB)

applications. The second part of this chapter describes research into carbon

nanotubes for nanoelectronics.

2.2 Current Status of Nanotechnology in Korea

Korea is renowned for its excellence in some high technologies and large-volume

process engineering, which is shown by its world-leading position in semiconductor

memory chips, shipbuilding and many electronic products. In addition, Korea is

somehow a leader in information technology (IT). At the end of December 2001,

the number of mobile phone users (28 million) exceeded that of PC users

(17 million) and almost half of all Koreans (24 million) used the internet. This

shows that the country is at the forefront of utilizing state-of-the-art technologies.

In July 2001 the government drew up a ten-year plan for nanotechnology. It

breaks down into three stages until 2010 whereby the government is going to pour

1.48 trillion won ($1 ¼ 1200 won) into the scheduled projects (Table 2.1). The

government’s aims are to pave the way for the introduction of NT infrastructure

within five years and to secure core NT for entering the world’s top five nations

in this field by 2010, although Korea’s present achievements in NT are very few,

at 25% of the rating for advanced countries. However, we believe that the

technological expertise accumulated during the past decades in semiconductor

devices, processing and manufacturing could provide a launching pad for NT.

The government will focus on the selected areas that have the most commercial

potential and competitiveness compared with advanced countries. The promising

fields are nanodevices, nanomaterials, nanoprocessing and other basic technologies.

The government will execute the plan to obtain at least 10 cutting-edge NTs and to

produce 12 600 NT experts by 2010.

NT in Korea is largely in its infancy, hence there is a great shortage of trained

engineers. According to a recent survey, Korea has around 1000 NT scientists and

engineers. This number emerged suddenly one morning when many pseudo￾nanoscientists and engineers claimed their work was NT. Therefore one of the

major focuses of the NT plan is to foster as many highly qualified NT scientists

and engineers as possible. Consequently, the plan also includes the creation of

interdisciplinary programmes devoted to NT by multiple departments at major

universities and the re-education for NT fields of researchers in traditional

disciplines.

Under the plan, the government is supposed to create a centralized nano

fabrication centre where all the research facilities are open to domestic and foreign

scientists and engineers from university, industry and national labs on a peer-review

basis, while pushing through the establishment of a facility network domestically

and with foreign countries.

In 2002 Korea invested 203.1 billion won in NT and introduced a bill that would

accelerate NT developments. The move is a reflection of the government’s view that

NT will be one of the most important fields for Korea in coming years. The 2002

investment figure of 203.1 billion won is a 93.1% increase from 105.2 billion won

26 Nanotechnology