Nanotech Advancing, One Tiny Step at a Time

Is nanotechnology -- once richly fertilized by hype, then left for dead by investors after it failed to deliver a single hot IPO -- finally starting to deliver on its promise?

A recent report from U.K.-based research firm Cientifica suggests that it just might be. And if so, it will have little to do with all that investment and hype a few years back.

First, some perspective: Back in the 1990s, research firm Gartner outlined the five stages of hype: Technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity.

If you've watched the Internet develop for the last 15 years or so, you might peg it in stage five, and one could say so-called cleantech is riding out stage two.

And nanotech? On Cientifica's blog, President Tim Harper, who has long mixed keen insight with a sharp tongue, declared last week that long after many investors have given up on a molecular-level killer-app, we're at "the point at which nanotech moves out of the 'Trough of Disillusionment' and into the 'Slope of Enlightment.'"

"We always knew that it would get there," he added. "One just needed a little patience to see it come to fruition."

To back up that somewhat contrarian assertion, Cientifica has released a 1,000-word report, an update to one last published five years ago. In it, Cientifica argues that the failure of IPOs such as Nanosys and Nanodynamics, and the string of disappointments among companies that touted their nanotech promise, are paradoxically signs that market opportunities for nanotechnology are finally starting to emerge.