Is Nano- going to be just the next buzzword or buzz prefix for Wall Street type promoters?

Implications: The tech 'revolutions' in the period since World War II have been numerous and monumental. Just the advances in electronics and  structural materials and the resultant engineering advances made possible by them have changed our civilization globally and forever. Now we are moving from the study and use of the gross properties of materials to the study and use of the microscopic, nano-, properties of metals and materials, which were unknown in quantities of more than a few pounds even in 1945. There is no way to predict the outcome of this new direction for technology or how long it may take to bear fruit.

Analysis:  In the laboratory under controlled conditions scientists and engineers create the highest efficiency lithium technology (battery) cells, highly efficient automotive emission control catalysts without the need for platinum group metals, and solar cells with 30% conversion of sunlight to electricity.

In the real world the problem becomes how do you mass produce such results in a reliable way with long service lives and costs low enough to be affordable for ordinary applications? 

The real world problems are the stumbling block for lithium technology batteries, and they show no signs of moving beyond their present plateau anytime soon.

It is the same for automotive emission control catalysts.

Solar cells were first 'discovered' a very long time ago, in terms of modern electronics, and it was a time when there was no such discipline as 'materials' science.' Today materials' scientists have a well developed theoretical basis for designing devices such as solar cells from materials that have been developed only in the last generation; they can even design, in some instances, materials with selected electronic properties which can be built with known technologies or which designs can lead to research to discover or invent the necessary materials.

But the world is not awash either in money for this work or in an oversupply of educated, trained, and resourceful researchers. In addition it often takes generations for laboratory devices to become the basis for such products as iPods or LCD HD displays.

On top of fundamental materials research in the last decade or so laboratory workers have also discovered how to make uniform, or at least repeatable, batches of materials with a tiny number of atomic or molecular units, which have been baptized as nanomaterials.

For the first time we are seeing what the properties of small, even individual, atoms and molecules are.

Only financial analysts could think that once a nanomaterial is discovered with, for example, a 30% conversion efficiency for converting sunlight to electricity, that it is just a snap of the fingers until such materials are routinely produced, connected to each other, placed on electronic conductors and used to power drink mixers and automobiles.

Research scientists, manufacturing engineers, raw material sourcing specialists, and budget analysts are much better informed of the long, long, lead times involved and the dead ends to be avoided than all of the financial analysts and politicians in the world.

Nanomaterials development requires megadollars and, frequently, megatime. Investing in such long term research and development is not for the faint of heart.