Invisible Origins of - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

Invisible Origins of
Nanotechnology:
Herbert Gleiter,
Materials Science, et
Questions of Prestige1

Alfred Nordmann
Darmstadt Technical University

Herbert Gleiter promoted the development of nanostructured materials on a
variety of levels. Dans 1981 déjà, he formulated research visions and pro-
duced experimental as well as theoretical results. Still he is known only to a
small community of materials scientists. That this is so is itself a telling fea-
ture of the imagined community of nanoscale research. After establishing the
plausibility of the claim that Herbert Gleiter provided a major impetus, un
second step will show just how deeply Gleiter shaped (and ceased to inºuence)
the vision of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in the US. Enfin,
alors, the apparent invisibility of Gleiter’s importance needs to be understood.
This leads to the main question of this investigation. Though materials re-
search meets even the more stringent deªnitions of nanotechnology, there re-
mains a systematic tension between materials science and the device-centered
visions of nanotechnology. Though it turned the tables on the scientiªc pres-
tige of physics, materials science runs up against the engineering prestige of
the machine.

The website of a 2002 symposium on nanostructured materials offers a
rather typical “potted history” of nanotechnology. It begins with the stan-
dard reference to Richard Feynman’s prophetic vision of 1959 (a histori-
cally questionable reference, to be sure, see Feynman 1960, Toumey

1. A ªrst draft of this study was presented at the CHF Cain Conference on “Nano before
there was nano,” March 19, 2005. It draws on many conversations, especially with Horst
Hahn (Darmstadt Technical University, Research Center Karlsruhe), Hanno zur Loyen
(USC, Columbia), James Murday (Naval Research Laboratory), Gary Peterson (CHF Fel-
faible, also at University of Pittsburgh), Eckart Exner (formerly at Darmstadt Technical Uni-
versity), and Herbert Gleiter (formerly at Saarbrücken and Research Center Karlsruhe). je
thank Cyrus Mody, Aant Elzinga, and various referees for stimulating and detailed critical
commentary. I couldn’t do justice here to all the points they raised.

Perspectives on Science 2009, vol. 17, Non. 2
©2009 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

123

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Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology

2008). It then cites a breakthrough moment when this prophecy came to
be realized, and ªnally describes the productive present state and promis-
ing prospect of further nanoscale research. Somewhat unusual about this
history is only how it identiªed the breakthrough moment:

Dans 1959 Richard Feynman at Cal Tech spoke of “Plenty of Room at
the bottom” to highlight the tremendous scientiªc and techno-
logical potential of materials and devices at atomic/molecular di-
mensions. Nearly twenty years later, Herbert Gleiter focussed on
the beneªts of ultraªne grains in solids and coined the term
nanostructured solids. Aujourd'hui, Nanoscience and nanotechnology is
the fastest growing research area. It will require a very strong inter-
disciplinary approach to translate the extraordinary possibilities of-
fered by nanomaterials into practical devices.2

It is safe to say that Herbert Gleiter’s accomplishment is known only to a
certain community of materials scientists and that his contribution is not
readily recognizable to most who are involved with nanotechnology. That
this is so can be viewed as a telling feature of the imagined community of
nanoscale research. It speaks to the difference between what nano-
technology is taken to be and where it has been most successful so far. Ac-
cordingly, this paper begins by establishing the plausibility of the claim
that Herbert Gleiter provided a major impetus or starting point of the
nanotechnological enterprise. De plus, it is possible to trace in a second
step just how deeply Gleiter shaped and ceased to inºuence the vision of
the US Nanotechnology Initiative. Enfin, alors, the apparent invisibility
of Gleiter’s importance needs to be understood. This leads to the main
question of this investigation. Materials science research meets even the
more stringent deªnitions of nanotechnology, but there remains a curious
mismatch between materials science and the device-centered visions of

2. Indian Institute of Technology, Dehli: National Symposium on Nanostructured
Materials, December 5–6, 2002, http://www.iitd.ernet.in/utilities/archives/symp_nano
.html—accessed on March 15, 2005 (no longer available January 2006). Historiograph-
ically more signiªcant, Robert Cahn tells the same story in his history of materials science:
“At a meeting of the American Physical Society in 1959, the Nobel prize-winning physi-
cist, Richard Feynman, speculated in public about the likely effects of manipulating tiny
pieces of condensed matter. [. . .] Attention had been focused on nanostructured materials
by a lecture delivered in Denmark by Herbert Gleiter (1981); in a recent outline survey of
the ªeld, Siegel (1996) describes this lecture as a ‘watershed event’” (2001, p. 398). Cahn
adds that it was Gleiter who founded the research ªeld of nanostructured materials (2001,
p. 400).—Customarily, the breakthrough from Feynman to nanotechnology is attributed
to Binnig and Rohrer’s development of the STM, but also to Eigler and Schweizer’s
achievement of moving atoms at will, to Drexler’s visions, or to the announcement of the
US’s Nanotechnology Initiative.

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Perspectives on Science

125

nanotechnology. Though it exercises control at the molecular level to ex-
ploit novel nanoscale-dependent properties, it seems that “there must be
more” to nanotechnology—but what more is there to be had, and what
gets lost in its pursuit?

À la fin, alors, this paper seeks to shed light on one of the major
metaphysical ambitions of nanotechnology, namely to invest matter with
machine-like qualities (Jones 2004). It does so in a round-about and sug-
gestive manner, namely by telling a “telling story” of the development of
nanotechnology. It is important, donc, to keep in mind the method-
ological status of such an endeavor: What looks at ªrst like a historical in-
vestigation is a one-sided reconstruction that aims to show why it is plau-
sible to advance the quasi-historical claim about Gleiter as a founding
father of nanotechnology. All this investigation needs is a simple picture
of the relation between solid state physics and materials science. This pic-
ture is familiar to researchers who work at the interface of these two ªelds
but it is not the only one and does not reºect the internal struggles within
both communities (Bensaude-Vincent 2001, Bensaude-Vincent & Hessen-
bruch 2004, Weart 1992). De la même manière, when it comes to explaining Gleiter’s
invisibility in most stories of nanotechnological development, the expla-
nation draws on accounts of nanotechnology as a “technoscience” that pro-
ceeds in an engineering mode. Such an account is supported, Par exemple,
by the kinds of questions Gleiter and his nanotechnological peers ask
about new materials, but this alone cannot establish the profound differ-
ence between Gleiter’s scientiªc interests and the technoscientiªc attitude
that typically informs nanotechnological research (Nordmann 2008). Le
“explanation” of the peculiar fate of Herbert Gleiter’s accomplishments
thus draws on general features that cannot simply be presupposed but re-
quire further study. Instead of settling an issue, this explanation serves
heuristically to recommend the assumptions that it employs.

1. Basic Ideas.
In order to fully appreciate Herbert Gleiter’s “basic idea,” it helps to be re-
minded of orthodoxy. Dans 1964, John Ziman expressed in the opening page
of his Principles of the Theory of Solids what deªned not long ago a hierarchi-
cal relation between physics and materials science: All of solid state phys-
ics can be explained in terms of perfect crystals. Materials science steps in
only where real material properties must be explained in terms of defects.

A theory of the physical properties of solids would be practically
impossible if the most stable structure for most solids were not a
regular crystal lattice. The N-body problem is reduced to manage-
able proportions by the existence of translational symmetry. That

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Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology

means that there exist basic vectors, a1, a2, a3 such that the atomic struc-
ture remains invariant under translation through any vector which is the
sum of integral multiples of these vectors.

In practice, this is only an ideal. Every solid is a bounded speci-
men, so that we must not carry our structure through the boundary.
But the only regions where this matters are the layers of atoms near
the boundaries, and in a block of N atoms these constitute only
about N2/3—say 1 atom in 108 in a macroscopic specimen. La plupart
crystalline solids are also structurally imperfect, with defects, impu-
rities and dislocations to disturb the regularity of arrangement of
the atoms. Such imperfections give rise to many interesting physi-
cal phenomena, but we shall ignore them, except incidentally, dans
the present discussion. We are concerned here with the perfect ideal
solid [. . .] (Ziman 1964)3

Ziman states two limits to the view that there can be a physical theory of
perfect ideal solids, and in effect, relegates the phenomena at these limits
to another kind of enterprise, namely that of materials research. Openly
acknowledging that his simpliªcation omits for practical and didactic
purposes many interesting phenomena, Ziman states that boundaries and
surfaces can be neglected, and for the most part also the irregularities and
imperfections of the bulk. In the context of nanotechnological research,
cependant, the relation is inversed. The limits of solid state physics are con-
stitutive for nanoscale phenomena: In a nanoparticle, a great proportion of
atoms lie near the boundaries, and the interesting properties of nano-
structured materials depend crucially on the departures from regular crys-
talline states and thus on imperfections, defects, impurities, and disloca-
tion. En effet, this was ªrst suggested by Herbert Gleiter when he
proposed in 1981 that material properties will change dramatically when
the proportion of atoms near a boundary increases from 1 dans 108 à 1 dans 2.4
Gleiter earned a doctorate in physics with a dissertation on the interac-
tions of displacements with coherent, tensed, disordered, and ordered par-
ticles. This theoretical investigation had immediate practical relevance for

3. In the context of nanoscience and technology studies, it is a matter of interest and
some irony that in recent decades the same John Ziman produced analyses of science and
technoscience, coining the term “post-academic science” that serves also to mourn the lost
status of an ideal (and idealizing) academic science and to provide a critical perspective on
the rise of nanotechnological research, see Ziman 1968, 2000.

4. Another way of putting this: When Feynman famously proposed in 1959 that one
might write the Enyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin, he did not realize that he
would thereby change the physical properties of the pin. (I owe this apt observation to
Axel Blau.)

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particle-hardening of metals in speciªc applications such as turbines,
jet engines, and the like (Gleiter 1964).5 Dans 1972, he published a book
avec B. Chalmers on High-Angle Grain Boundaries. Its opening pages
raise a somewhat speculative “what if” question that preªgures Gleiter’s
later researches. The authors consider a type of departure from the perfect
crystal where the immediate environments of atoms, their nearest-
neighbor conªgurations are changed in such a way that the crystal moves
so far from equilibrium atomic spacing that, at some point, it ceases to be
a crystal:

We must, donc, consider how the atoms in the boundary region
can adjust their positions so as to increase the strength and decrease
the energy of the boundary from the values we would expect from
the ‘rigid’ contact concept [. . .] we must distinguish between two
ways in which departure from the perfect crystal can be envisaged.
One is by approximately linear elastic distortion, in which the dis-
tances between atoms change by an amount not exceeding a few per
cent. The force-displacement relationships are Hookean in this re-
gime and the environment of each atom remains essentially un-
changed in the sense that the numbers of neighbors (nearest, sec-
ond, etc.) do not change. The second is more drastic, in the sense
that an atom moves to a position in which its nearest-neighbor
conªguration is changed and its departure from equilibrium inter-
atomic spacing is outside the linear Hookean range. There is, de
cours, no absolute line of demarcation between these two regimes,
but the distinction appears nevertheless to be useful. (Gleiter and
Chalmers 1972, p. 2)6

While there is no absolute line of demarcation between the two regimes,
Gleiter’s question takes the form of asking whether a gradual shift from
one regime to the other will at some point involve a qualitative change. If
a material consists of grains and if, in a sense, it is compacted from parti-
clés, Gleiter’s question corresponds to the following conjecture: Si le

5. This line of work caught the attention of Bernie Kear (then at Pratt & Whitney, plus tard
at Rutgers). Dans 1990, Kear organized in Atlantic City a nanomaterials conference that was
the precursor of bi-annual of events (from Nano 1992 in Cancun to Nano 2008 in Rio de
Janeiro). Bernie Kear’s name will reappear at various points in this paper, but the Gleiter-
Kear connection and its signiªcance for the formation of the nanoresearch enterprise clearly
requires further exploration.

6. Ce 1972 collaboration places Gleiter’s research in a wider context of ongoing work
within solid state physics and materials science and engineering. Characteristic for
Gleiter’s approach is his interest in qualitative changes that might result from extrapola-
tion.

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Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology

grain decreases and if the material is compacted from nanosize particles,
the material is internally structured by grain boundaries with most atoms
so close to those boundaries that their nearest-neighbor conªgurations are
far from equilibrium interatomic spacing as in a crystal lattice.7 This con-
jecture is, in effect, Gleiter’s basic idea which he formulated explicitly and
began exploring experimentally in a 1981 paper on “Materials with Ultra-
Fine Grain Sizes.”8 The paper announces “a new class of materials” which
at this point Gleiter calls “interfacial” or “microcrystalline.” Among the
attractive novel features of these materials is the fact that “they may be ‘al-
loyed’ on a nanometer scale” (Gleiter 1981, p. 15).

Even though, dans 1981, Gleiter does not yet use the term “nanocrystal-
line material,”9 his characterization of these new materials meets the
deªnition of nanotechnology by drawing on novel nanoscale-dependent
properties. On a practical level, this consists in the fact that these materi-
als “may be ‘alloyed’ on a nanometer scale irrespective of miscibility, type
of bonding, structure, molecular weight, etc.” In other words, c'est facile de
compound nanoparticles into a material because the atoms in the bound-
ary region of a nanoparticle (that consists of nothing but a boundary re-
gion) can adjust their positions so as to increase the strength and decrease
the energy of the boundary, irrespective of the usual constraints from the
volume or bulk of a material.

More consequential even than this is Gleiter’s theoretical characteriza-
tion of the new class of materials. Their second attractive feature consists
in the fact that “their atomic and electronic structure may be different
from the atomic and electronic structure of the glassy or cystalline state of
the same material.” This statement carefully prepares the somewhat
bolder and far-reaching claim that these “new materials” are new in that
they represent an entirely new state of matter. Gleiter goes on to state this
more openly:

7. In the terms of Science Studies, this reconstruction of Gleiter’s approach is strongly
internalist. Gleiter’s basic idea appears as a theoretical extrapolation with practical
signiªcance (as such like Moore’s Law in semiconductor research and its pursuit of a trajec-
tory of miniaturization). This mode of thought was extended one more time in Gleiter’s
later researches: After exploring what happens to crystalline structures in the course of the
miniaturization of grain sizes, he is now looking at the effects of the miniaturization of
amorphous or glassy structures.

8. An even earlier formulation (without a visionary or programmatic dimension) can be

found in a brief abstract by Marquardt and Gleiter 1980.

9. For the ªrst use of “nanocrystalline materials” see Gleiter and Marquardt 1984;
Birringer, Gleiter et al. 1984. Gleiter himself refers to his 1981 paper as the ªrst statement
of the “basic idea” in 1989, p. 226, et 1993, p. 10.

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Grain boundaries and interphase boundaries represent a special
state of solid matter due to the fact that the atoms forming an in-
terface are subjected to the (periodic) potential ªeld of the crystals
on both sides of the interface.10 As a consequence, the arrangements
of atoms in interfaces basically differ from the amorphous and crys-
talline states. [. . .] Ainsi, the structure and the properties of a
solid in which the volume of the interfaces becomes comparable to
or larger than the volume of the crystals (microcrystalline or inter-
facial materials) may be different from the structure and properties
of the same materials in the crystalline or the amorphous state.
[. . .] Par exemple, in the case of gold, the material contains 50 vol.
% grain boundaries if the diameter of the crystals is about 3 . . .
6 nm. As the material may consist of crystals of the same or of dif-
ferent types, the attractive features of such microcrystalline materi-
als are as follows: (je) They may provide an opportunity to generate a
state of matter which is different from the glassy and crystalline
state. (Gleiter 1981, p. 15–16)

In terms of practical developments, Gleiter’s suggestions led to various
techniques for creating nanocrystalline materials. This is reºected in the
following four statements, somewhat arbitarily selected from various con-
texts: (je) “The term ‘nanoparticle’ appeared in the literature around 1982
in connection with powder particles having physical dimensions of one to
ten nanometers in diameter. These particles were prepared by H. Gleiter
and co-workers by the gas condensation of metal vapors in a low-pressure
inert atmosphere. These particles were then condensed and consolidated
into small solids, and the products were called ‘nanostructured’ materials”
(Schwarz 1998, p. 93); (ii) “Pioneer explorations to synthesize NC samples
were performed by Gleiter et al. in early 1980s” (Lu 1999, p. 1127); (iii)
“Initial development of new crystalline materials was based on nano-
particles generated by evaporation and condensation (nucleation and
growth) in a subatmospheric inert-gas environment (Gleiter 1989)» (Hu
and Shaw 1999, p. 20), et (iv) “The ªeld of nanocrystalline (or nano-
structuré, or nanophase) materials as a major identiªable activity in mod-
ern materials science results to a large degree from the work in the 1980s

10. Note a theoretically suggestive play on words here: Where Gleiter speaks of “inter-
faces” as well as “interphase boundaries” a particular phase of matter emerges at the interface
of two nanoscale crystals with different phases, thus an interphase for example of the phases
of lead- and aluminium-crystals. The following discussion will show more clearly how
Gleiter shifts attention from scale-independent crystal phases to crystal-size-dependent
‘nanophase’ material.

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of Gleiter and coworkers, who synthesized ultraªne-grained materials
by the in situ consolidation of nanoscale atomic clusters” (Koch 1999,
p. 94).11

Along with these practical developments came more pointed theoreti-
cal characterizations of the new materials as they represent an entirely new
state of matter:

Two fundamental types of solids are distinguished according to
their characteristic ranges of structural order: crystals with long
range order and non-equilibrium systems (glassy or other “amor-
phous” solids) with short range order only.

This note reports evidence for the existence of a third solid state
structure characterized by the absence of long or short range order,
similar to a gas-like structure, et, hence, conventionally classiªed
as “gas-like” solids. Generally, conventional macroscopic solids are
formed from liquid or gaseous constituents which relax during
solidiªcation into structures of short (glassy) or long range (crystal-
line) order. It is proposed to synthesize gas-like solids by compact-
ing pre-generated randomly oriented crystals with sizes d below
10nm (“nanocrystals”). Under the conditions applied in the experi-
ments, this method of “nanocrystalline solids” which are produced
by a suitable compacting technique, seems to lead to a new class of
solids. (Birringer, Gleiter, Klein, and Marquardt 1984, p. 365)

Gleiter and his collaborators here express most fully the inversion of the
traditional relation between solid states physics and materials science.
John Ziman spoke of defects as interesting special cases at the limits of
physics. For Gleiter, all materials are characterized by a greater or smaller
number of defects, the limiting case being the idealized defect-free crys-
tals of solid state physics.12 By considering the entire range of materials,

11. While the commercial signiªcance of Gleiter’s nanocrystalline materials was
quickly recognized and found its expression in the Saarbrücken Institute for New Mate-
rials, Gleiter’s ties to industry still need to be investigated. It appears that Gleiter was
more inºuential in developing production methods than in optimizing speciªc applica-
tion-oriented material properties. Altogether neglected in this paper is Gleiter’s contribu-
tion to modelling and simulation techniques, see already Weins, Gleiter, and Chalmers
1971, and more recently Keblinski, Phillpot, Loup, and Gleiter 1999 or Yamakov, Loup,
Phillpot, Mukherjee, and Gleiter 2002.

12. The ubiquity of interfacial boundaries is tantamount to a dominance of defects;
compare the following expression of the basic idea: “It is the basic idea of nanocrystalline
materials to generate a new class of disordered solids by introducing such a high density of
defect cores that 50% or more of the atoms (molecules) are situated in the cores of these de-
fects” (Gleiter 1989, p. 226).

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materials science is the science of material states and phase-transitions be-
tween them, and thus for Gleiter a primarily theoretical enterprise with
practical implications. In the transition to nanostructuring and the result-
ing dominance of defects, this theoretical materials science has come into
its own.

2. The Production of Neglect.
The presentation of Gleiter’s basic ideas and experimental ªndings may
sufªce to plausibly consider him a “founding father” of nanotechnology.
This appears warranted especially by his early use of the term “nano-
crystalline materials,” the recognition of discontinuous, size-dependent
nanoscale properties, and the explicit, some would say: visionary formula-
tion of a research program dedicated to the production, enquête, et
exploitation of these novel properties. Nineteen years before the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, nine years before Eigler and Schweizer manip-
ulated single atoms, ªve years before Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation, four
years before the identiªcation of the buckyball, and in the same year as
Binnig and Rohrer’s invention of the scanning tunneling microscope,
Herbert Gleiter can be seen as the ªrst productive nanotechnology re-
searcher who thought of himself in these terms.

It is impossible, cependant, to conceive the emergence of nanotechnology
as a development internal to science, let alone a single scientiªc discipline.
Nanotechnology is at least as much a social as a scientiªc phenomenon.
While certain origins can be traced to various scientiªc and technical de-
velopments, early uses of “nanotechnology” and related terms, nano-
technology emerged as a prominent research and funding scheme only in
1999 et 2000 with the announcement of the National Nanotechnology
Initiative in the United States. To be sure, this announcement was pub-
licly justiªed as a speciªc proactive response to international develop-
ments:

The U.S. Government, for one, invested approximately $116 mil- lion in ªscal year 1997 in nanotechnology research and develop- ment. For FY 1999, that ªgure has risen to an estimated $260 mil-
lion. Japan and Europe are making similar investments. Whoever
becomes most knowledgeable and skilled on these nanoscopic scales
probably will ªnd themselves well positioned in the ever more
technologically-based and globalized economy of the 21st century.
That helps explain why the White House National Science and
Technology Council (NSTC) created the Interagency Working
Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology (IWGN) dans
1998. (Amato 1999, p. 2)

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Only after the White House “reacted” as it did with the NNI to a per-
ceived competitive threat from Europe and Japan, Europe and Germany
reacted, à son tour, by also establishing “nanotechnology” as a broad research
agenda in its own right.13

If Herbert Gleiter is to be considered a founding father of nano-
technologie, broadly conceived, his role in the emergence of a public re-
search agenda needs to be clariªed also. Was he, like Richard Feynman,
Norio Taniguchi (who coined the “nanotechnology” in 1974), or Eric
Drexler one who did work that appears prophetic only in retrospect, or did
his research shape the deªnition and contribute to the scientiªc legitimacy
of the NNI? The answer to this question can provide further evidence of
Gleiter’s signiªcance. En même temps, cependant, it suggests where a part-
ing of the ways took place that accounts for his disappearance for the most
part from the grand nanotechnology narratives. As it turns out, his disap-
pearance coincides with a demotion of materials research on the one hand,
of theory-driven nanoscale research on the other.

A reader in the year 1999 of the journal Nanostructured Materials
(founded in 1992) could have discovered among the list of editors a con-
stellation of persons that was consequential for the NNI. Next to promi-
nent researchers like Richard Smalley, Bernie Kear, C. C. Koch, L. E. Brus,
T. Tsakalos, et d'autres, that constellation would have consisted of Richard
Siegel as one of three principal editors, Herbert Gleiter as member of the
editorial board, and Horst Hahn as associate editor. In a contribution to
Scientiªc American, Richard Siegel described their relation in the following
termes:

Dans 1981, though, a watershed event occurred. At a conference at
Risø National Laboratory in Denmark, German physicist Herbert
Gleiter then at the University of the Saarland suggested to his audi-
ence that materials made by consolidating ultraªne particles would
themselves have radically different characteristics. Following this
talk, Gleiter’s laboratory published several provocative studies of
nanocrystalline metals, which stirred much excitement in the mate-
rials research communities both in Europe and in the U.S.
My own involvement with nanostructuring began quite

serendipitously at a conference in India four years later. There I met
Gleiter’s former student Horst Hahn. Hahn, who is now at the
University of Darmstadt, was then about to begin a postdoctoral
appointment at Argonne, and I helped to set him up, giving him

13. Part of this reaction was, Par exemple, the establishment in 1998 of a ªrst research
institute for nanotechnology at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, with Herbert Gleiter as
its head. The story of Japan is more complicated and cannot be told here.

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the vacuum equipment he needed to build a chamber for synthesiz-
ing atom clusters. He and I soon began to discuss whether ultraªne
powders might be used in making materials other than metals—
the task he had initially planned to pursue. Within a few months,
we had succeeded in producing a ceramic, nanophase titania, made
from 10-nanometer clusters of titanium that were reacted with oxy-
gen. (Siegel 1996, p. 75)14

Soon after the beginning of their collaboration, Siegel and Hahn co-
published a review article on “Nanophase Materials” (Siegel and Hahn
1987). Aussi, along with Bernie Kear and six others, Siegel became a mem-
ber of the Committee on Materials with Submicron-Sized Microstructures
that issued a 1989 report to the National Research Council on “Research
Opportunities for Materials with Ultraªne Microstructures.”15 Gleiter and
his collaborators are frequently cited in this report. In the attached
biosketch for Richard Siegel, he is presented as group leader at Argonne
National Laboratories in the area of metal physics and defects of metals
whose research has concentrated “mostly recently on the synthesis, charac-
terization, and properties of ultraªne-grained nanophase materials, partic-
ularly ceramics” (Kear, Cross et al. 1989, p. 110).

Due to his stature and involvement with the issues, perhaps also as
founder and director of Nanophase Technologies Corporation (Pour qui
he received in 1991 a U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Ex-
cellence in Technology Transfer), Siegel was invited to play a major in role
in the preparation of the NNI. Míhail Roco recalls the various steps of this
preparation-process:

We began with preparing supporting publications, including a re-
port on research directions in 10 areas of relevance, despite the low
expectation of additional funding at that moment. NNI was pre-
pared with the same rigor as a science project between 1997 et
2000: we developed a long-term vision for research and develop-
ment, we completed an international benchmarking of
nanotechnology in academe, government, and industry [. . .] (Roco
2004, p. 894)

In the ªrst phase of this process, Siegel chaired a 1997 workshop and (à-
gether with Evelyn Hu and Mjhail Roco) edited its proceedings on “R&D

14. Especially for its use in cosmetics, nanoparticulate titanium dioxide serves to this

day as an exemplary nanotechnological product.

15. The expression “submicron-sized microstructures” nicely captures how one talked

about nano before there was nano.

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Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology

Status and Trends in Nanoparticles, Nanostructured Materials, et
Nanodevices in the U.S.” This report emphasized Gleiter’s importance in
the section on synthesis and assembly (mostly in Schwarz 1998). Siegel
also served as the main editor of the benchmarking survey Nanostructure
Science and Technology: A Worldwide Study. Encore, it includes numerous ref-
erences to Gleiter (voir, especially, Hu and Shaw 1999, Cox 1999, Koch
1999).

Ce 1999 étude, cependant, marks a turning point. It provided the last
crucial element in the argument for the NNI, namely the need for the US
to defend or assume the lead in international nanotechnological develop-
ments. From here on, NNI-reports have focused on the US research-
agenda, nanotechnological accomplishments and challenges at home. Le
1999 study is also the last to give prominence to materials research: Rich-
ard Siegel has not been involved with later NNI overviews of nano-
technology research, and one will look in vain for any mention of Herbert
Gleiter or even for research priorities regarding new materials, particles
and coatings.16 One reason for all this may have been produced by the
1999-study itself: The result of the international comparison was that the
US was leading in most areas of nanotechnological research, y compris
“Synthesis and Assembly,” “Dispersions and Coatings,” and “High Surface
Area Materials.” Notably, cependant, the report states three times (and a
fourth time in a table) that “in the nanodevices area, Japan seems to be
leading quite strongly, with Europe and the United States following”
(Siegel et al. 1999, abstract, pp. xix, xxi,10).17 If the NNI was to assure US
dominance where it was most clearly challenged, the area of nanodevices
had to move center stage. Inversely one might argue that on certain no-
tions of nanotechnology, nanodevices are the most prominent and

16. Compare the National Science and Technology Council’s Supplement to the Presi-
dent’s FY 2004 Budget National Nanotechnology Initiative: Research and Development Sup-
porting the Next Industrial Revolution. This report relates the success-story of wear-resistant
coatings in the box “Nanotechnology on a Fast Track” (NSTC 2003, p. 6). When it comes
to identifying challenge areas, cependant, the section “Nanostructured Materials by Design”
focuses on functionalized materials and tellingly offers “The Fullerene Ideal” and its “Mo-
lecular Perfection” as a research example (NSTC 2003, pp. 15–16). Accordingly, there is in
the prospective part of the report only brief mention of selective coatings that can function
in cantilever devices (NSTC 2003, pp. 15 et 21). This contrasts sharply to European re-
ports that are far more likely to highlight repellant surfaces, improved textiles, scratch-free
paints, etc.. (Europe and Japan are no longer mentioned in the 2003 NNI report.)

17. By “nanodevices” the report means nanotubes for high brightness displays, biomed-
ical sensors, disk drive read heads that exploit the giant magnetoresistance effect, et le
like (Siegel et al. 1999, p. xx). Bien sûr, the imaginative reach of the term “nanodevice”
reaches all the way to robots, assemblers, or visions of molecular manufacturing.

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prestigeous area of application and that it is here where one would most
want to excel in the ªrst place. Either way, by ªnding that the US was do-
ing well in regard to nanoparticles and nanostructured materials, the ma-
terials researcher Richard Siegel may have inadvertently prepared the
ground for the neglect of materials research in the NNI’s vision of
nanotechnology.18

3. Material and Device, Theory and Capability.
Though it remains difªcult to single out particular ideas or achievements
at the origin of nanotechnology, it should now be easy enough to appreci-
ate why Gleiter’s have been singled out by some: He may have been the
ªrst self-described productive nanoscale researcher, his research was exem-
plary in that it still meets stringent deªnitions of nanotechnology as ex-
ploiting discontinuous scale-dependent properties, and there was at least
one prominent trajectory of Gleiter’s inºuence on the NNI which, à son tour,
set an international standard for nanotechnology institutionalized as a re-
search priority.19 In light of all this, the question shifts to the relative ob-
scurity or invisibility not only of Herbert Gleiter but of the materials
research tradition represented by him in the grand narratives and pro-
grammatic visions of nanotechnology.

The answer to this question will elucidate a familiar, but only vaguely
expressed general sentiment: New ceramics, paints, coatings, textiles,
aerosols may be good examples of nanotechnology’s present economic
signiªcance, but they fall short of the ultimate ambitions of nano-
technologie. These concern nanoengineered systems and devices.20 In light
of this sentiment, Gleiter’s brand of materials research assumes a some-
what paradoxical character. After defeating at the nanoscale the supposed
theoretical dominance of solid state physics, materials science is now run-
ning up against a particular ideal of engineering, against the prestige of

18. To be sure, this neglect in the vision is not matched by neglect in funding or com-
mercial signiªcance where materials research continues to be a driving force. En effet, un
might argue that materials research has become a victim of its own success and that it can
afford to be indifferent to this.

19. Other trajectories of inºuence remain to be explored, for one of them see note 5
above.—Even the 2003 NNI-report (see note 6 au-dessus de) still includes as a faint echo an
oversimpliªed gesture to Gleiter’s basic idea: “nanostructured materials manifest the
unique properties of their component parts” (NSTC 2003, 16). Compare Siegel’s “interme-
diary” formulation that was quoted above: “materials made by consolidating ultraªne par-
ticles would themselves have radically different characteristics” (Siegel 1996, p. 75).

20. Anecdotal evidence for this can be found in the area of medical nanotechnology, pour
example. Researchers typically present important work on improved material for bone im-
plants, coatings for artiªcial joints etc. but they will not end their presentation without
stating the long-term goal of using selective coatings for targeted drug delivery.

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the device over the mere material. Put another way, when materials re-
search discovered a new class of materials and invited theoretical charac-
terizations of material states and phase transitions, it ran up against the
nanotechnological disinterest in the development of theory and its single-
minded acquisition of capabilities of mastery and control.21 This dual pre-
dicament—the prestige of the device over the material, of achieved capa-
bility over signiªcance for theory-development—can be illustrated and
elucidated by considering the fate of the term “nanophase materials.”

As opposed to the more neutral, and merely descriptive designation
“nanostructured materials,” Siegel’s suggestion to speak of “nanophase
materials” offers a theory-based characterization.22 Indeed, it picks up on
Gleiter’s suggestion that nanocrystalline materials represent a new class of
gas-like solids, a new material state next to the familiar crystalline and
amorphous or glassy states. If Gleiter’s term “gas-like” may be misunder-
stood as asserting that these materials are homogeneously disordered
throughout, Siegel and Hahn avoid this misunderstanding in their
deªnition of “nanophase material.” While “local atomic structures of indi-
vidual nanocrystalline interfaces [. . .] are likely to manifest ordered struc-
tural order,” the nanophase is characterized by the fact that “the sum of all
boundaries of a nanophase material [. . .] represents an aggregate solid-
state structure without long- or short-range order.” Given that all possible
“interatomic distances occur with similar probabilities” it is characteristic
of nanophase material that its properties depend strongly upon atomic ar-
rangements and thus also on morphological structure at atomic and mo-
lecular scales (Siegel and Hahn 1987, pp. 409–410, 405). Indebted to
Gleiter’s characterizations, the label “nanophase materials” recommends
them as speciªcally nanotechnological products, emphasizing their dis-
continuously novel character.23 It is all the more telling, alors, that the

21. For discussions and further evidence of nanotechnology’s systematic neglect of the-
ory see Nordmann 2004a and 2004b. Compare Cahn: “In materials science, we strive to
achieve by reproducible means what no one could do before” (2001, p. 182).

22. In his biographical account, Siegel writes simply: “My colleagues and I had been
studying these substances since 1985, quand, in need of a title for a research proposal late
one evening, I dubbed them ‘nanophase materials’” (Siegel 1996, p. 74).

23. In contrast, the term “nanostructured materials” does not inherently suggest such a
discontinuity. It allows for a merely extrinsic patterning of otherwise unaltered materials,
Par exemple, by lithographic techniques. In light of this term, it appears as a surprise that
such nanostructuring does alter the properties of the material (and not just how these prop-
erties are changed). Nanotechnology, bien sûr, esteems surprises highly. The unpredict-
ability of nanoscale phenomena from known classical and quantum theories is considered
to be one of the attractive and intellectually appealing features of the nanocosm. To be
sure, this estimation of wonder, surprise, novelty reinforces the skepticism about theories
of structure-property relations at the nanoscale.

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term has not taken hold.24 In a 1993 paper on “Nanostructured Materials”
Gleiter brieºy comments on the terminological shift:

Other names that were used in the past were “nanocrystalline” or
“nanophase materials” as well as “cluster-assembled materials.”
Since these names no longer do justice to the expansion of the ªeld
in recent years, the term “nanostructured materials” has been pro-
posed recently. (Gleiter 1993, p. 10)25

The expansion of the ªeld consisted most notably in the inclusion of
highly ordered structures with ªxed interatomic distances like the
Buckminster Fullerene and carbon nanotubes. “Nanostructured materials”
is more than a general label, cependant, that covers Gleiter’s new materials
alongside Smalley’s buckyballs, that includes the tradition of hardening
metals through the introduction of defects by hammering alongside the
artistic tradition of supra-molecular chemistry and its associated ideal of
control of atomic structure.26 To the extent that “structuring” connotes the
imposition of order, the term “nanostructured materials” favors the ideal
of control and downplays the deªning features of “nanophase materials,»
namely the various expressions of its “disordered” character: the constitu-
tive role of defects and departure from perfect crystals, heterogeneous con-
struction, incoherent boundary layers, gas-like disorder with its improba-
ble, unstable states, along with the persistent practical problem of
preventing the aggregation of these materials into coarser, more ordered
states (see Gleiter, Birringer et al. 1984 and still along the same lines
Gleiter 1993). From these descriptions and as opposed to “rational bodies”
like nanoshells, buckyballs, or carbon nanotubes, it does not sound as if
nanophase materials are suitably stable functional elements in the con-
struction of nanotechnological systems or devices. While the label “nano-
structured materials” suggests that they have been engineered according
to human designs, “nanophase material” represents a material state as if it
were an inchoate state of nature.

This analysis suggests that the term “nanophase material” does not ªt a
certain nanotechnological rhetoric, that it does not support an apparently

24. This is not to say that the terms “nanophase” or “nanocrystalline” have vanished in

their entirety (voir, Par exemple, Heegn, Birkeneder, Kamptner 2003).

25. Robert Cahn notes that the international scientiªc community settled on ‘nano-
structured’ materials as the preferred term, followed by ‘nanophase’ and ‘nanocrystalline’
materials (2001, p. 398). He warns that the term ‘nanostructures’ is, at any rate, too broad.
26. Joachim Schummer has argued that the latter tradition provides an aesthetic origin
for nanotechnological visions of functionalizable, device-like molecules. I agree that this
(aesthetic) ideal of supra-molecular chemistry dominates at least the grand narratives and
programs of nanotechnology. Dans un sens, I am here providing a complementary story (voir
Schummer 2006).

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preferred conception of engineering according to which nanotechnology
exercises precise control of atomic and molecular structure.27 The same can
be said of the associated experimental and visual rhetoric. Scanning probe
microscopes as paradigm tools for nanotechnological research are of little
use to nanophase materials. With the entire inferential structure built into
an STM, Par exemple, it appears to give immediate visual access and even a
level of control over the atomic structure of a surface. In contrast, the need
to look inside a material and discern the distributions of atoms along its
internal boundaries limits research on nanophase materials to electron mi-
croscopy and the traditional methods of inference from spectroscopic and
crystallographic data. To the extent that scanning probe microscopes are
themselves nanotechnical tools and exemplars of nanoscale precision and
control, nanophase materials research does not appear to have quite arrived
in the new world of nanotechnology.

The prestige of the nanotechnological device, its precise determination
and control of atomic structure is manifested also in the images produced
by the STM and the electron microscope, respectivement. The STM typically
affords a God’s (or engineer’s) eye view of an atomic landscape that is open
to exploration and intervention. The STM image looks clean, suggesting a
brightly colored world of clearly discernible, solid objects. Its implicit
visual message is always: we can go here and do things, this is a world
similar enough to the macroscopic world of our experience to permit me-
chanical engineering, the creation of circuits and switches, and the like
(compare Nordmann 2004b). In contrast, an electron microscopic interior
view of a material looks dirty, showing a somewhat fuzzy distribution of
black dots, neither ordered nor entirely disordered but swarm-like, avec-
out sharp boundaries and difªcult to get hold of. It communicates the re-
moteness of this interior world at the nanoscale, our difªculty of access
and control, en effet, the utter futility of wanting to engineer and sig-
niªcantly change anything by tampering with individual atoms.28

27. En effet, Gleiter and his collaborators frequently express that they have no such con-
trol. “Many of the studies performed so far are hampered by difªculties typical to newly
developing areas; Par exemple, by difªculties in specimen preparation, by a lack of reliable
methods for specimen characterization and by the present limitations in modeling such
systems theoretically” (Gleiter 1989, p. 227). Compare Siegel and Hahn (1987, p. 410):
“The actual local atomic nature of these boundaries is as of yet undetermined, but atomic
resolution electron microscopy on nanophase materials in progress is expected to elucidate
these structures.” The limitations mentioned here are crucial for theoretical understanding,
bien sûr, not necessarily for the production and characterization of nanophase materials.
Suryanarayana 2005 shows that these limits have been pushed outwards but by no means
surmounted in principle.

28. As was shown by Baird and Shew 2004, the experimental and visual rhetoric of the
STM needs to be distinguished from its actual usefulness in laboratory research. In many

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Perspectives on Science

139

All this has shown how a certain engineering ideal of atomic precision,
of designed systems and devices serves to downplay the development of
“mere” materials. Enfin, a similar case should be made for the commit-
ment to theoretical questions that is inherent in the characterization of
nanostructured material as “nanophase.” It should be shown that the
methods for producing the novel materials proved far more inºuential
than the suggestion that these materials represent a different state of mat-
ter, and also, that for Richard Siegel and most others, attempts to model
and understand local processes at the boundary layers lead a parallel, con-
siderably detached life from innovation processes and the acquisition of
new skills in the production of materials and manipulation of their prop-
erties.29

Since the absence of activity or its lack of relevance is methodologically
difªcult to establish, only an indirect line of evidence can be offered here.
It concerns the current uses of the term “nanophase.” While the origin of
the term can be traced to the theoretical characterization of a special mate-
rial state, its later incarnations carry no trace of this. The website of
Nanophase Technologies—the company founded by Richard Siegel—de-
scribes a broad range of products and services but nowhere suggests what
all these products have in common. The Nanophase Research Training Net-
work does not refer to a class of materials at all but uses the term as an ac-
ronym for “nanoscale photon absorption and spectroscopy with electrons.”
Most tellingly, peut-être, the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory includes a Nanomaterials Theory Institute. Its
purpose is to meet computational challenges such as “the design of func-
tional nanomaterials and virtual synthesis.” Devoted to computational
nanoscience it produces simulation tools that support the vision of perfect
control, its website featuring a computer simulation of a fullerene mole-
cule that appears to drag a helium-atom ºuid through a carbon nano-
tube.30 “Nanophase” is thus what philosophers of science have considered a

cases, electron microscopy proves superior (en effet, it may be superior already because of
the STM’s black-boxed inferences which are harder to control than those of electron mi-
croscopy). And yet, in the competitive world of nanotechnological demonstrations of im-
aging-skills, any discipline is hampered that, for systematic reasons, is limited to “boring”
or “dirty” images. (Inversely, one might argue that the practical accomplishments of mate-
rials research make it less necessary to proffer images as substitutes for real technical break-
throughs: the new materials speak for themselves, while nanoscale devices need visually
compelling proofs of possibility or concept to speak for them.)

29. Nordmann 2004a argues along similar lines in a case study from the nanotech-

nological ªeld of molecular electronics.

30. The three examples cited here correspond to a Google-search on February 13, 2009
that yielded 15,400 hits for “nanostructured material” and only 2,850 for “nanophase ma-
terial” (the plural “materials” yields more, namely 479,000 as against 41,200). For Nano-

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140

Invisible Origins of Nanotechnology

theoretical term that has become uprooted from its theoretical setting and
now serves many masters.

According to a simplistic view of nanotechnology, it is divided into two
camps. One camp is reserved for a small band of Drexlerian outsiders who
naively posit principles of macroscopic mechanical engineering and sim-
ply scale them down to atoms and molecules. Everyone else and all serious
nanoscale researchers are said to be in the other camp. This paper has only
been able to suggest that the fault lines run quite differently through the
various nanoscale research communities. Within materials research, là
are those who rationally design near-perfect bodies as building blocks or
substrates for nanotechnological systems and devices31, and there are those
who produce in a controlled manner structures of deliberate disorder that
are useful in their own right. The term “nanophase” is taken out of context
and used in radically different ways—as are terms like “self-assembly,»
“bottom-up engineering,” or “control.” Most importantly, there remains a
fundamental tension between emphasis on the novel, surprising, unpre-
dictable character of nanoscale phenomena and the ambition to construct
machine-like systems and devices.32

Whether Herbert Gleiter should ªgure as a founding father in histories
of nanotechnology (because he may have been the ªrst researcher to explic-
itly pursue a productive nanotechnological research program) or whether
he is rightly overlooked in such histories (because he recommended for
their theoretical interest as well as practical signiªcance a new class of
materials with “gas-like disorder”) is a matter of how these fault-lines
get drawn and redrawn. It is therefore not a matter of what nano-
technology is or is not, but where the nanotechnological research agenda
will go, whether it will come to terms with the dual notions of instability

phase Technologies, see http://www.nanophase.com, for the Nanophase Research Training
Réseau, which ended in 2004; see http://www-users.york.ac.uk/(cid:2)rwg3/nanophase.html,
regarding the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Labora-
tories,
http://www.cnms.ornl.gov/workshops/inaugural/CNMS_Fact_Sheet_2005-
Feb.pdf (all three sites accessed on February 13, 2009).

voir

31. Robert Cahn discusses this heterogeneity of materials science research. Instead of
referring to sub-disciplines or specializations, he uses the term “parepistemes.” The re-
search ªeld of nanostructured materials serves him as a prime example of a ‘parepisteme’
(Cahn 2001, pp. 159–185 and 401)—but compare Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent’s account
(2001).

32. In his book on Soft Machines, Richard Jones suggests how this tension can be over-
come. It remains to be seen whether his account can serve to reorient deep-rooted engineer-
ing paradigms or whether it proves to be a semantic exercise to have it both ways (c'est,
to speak of machines where the notion of a ‘machine’ no longer makes sense), see Jones
2004.

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Perspectives on Science

141

and control, and whether, Par exemple, it will seek a kind of disciplinary
uniªcation in theories of complex structure-property relations at the
nanoscale.33

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