National Nanomanufacturing Network: The Nano Engineering Lab at the University of California-Berkeley is the faculty research laboratory of Prof. Arunava Majumdar of the Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing (SINAM). The lab is comprised of a range of multi-disciplinary researchers studying a variety of nanotructured materials for applications in thermoelectricity, solar conversion, enhanced phase change heat transfer, and chemical  and biological sensing.

Future nanomanufacturing approaches and applications will consider their impact on energy efficiency in a research directive established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Nanomanufacturing Program is part of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Industrial Technology Program, and is managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

In this resource-conscious R&D environment, can you improve your company's chance of success by using a public Nanofabrication User Facility? How do you demonstrate the feasibility of an idea in a timely, cost-effective fashion? How do you leverage the manufacturing, processing and diagnostic tools that are available? For An Shyang Chu of PCB Piezotronics, an industrial user of the National Science foundation's (NSF) NanoTech User Facility at the University of Washington -- a member facility of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) -- "having the right expectations and understanding of the tool set is the first step."

While research into the properties of various nanostructured materials has received a good deal of press for many years now, recent research focuses on the controlled manipulation of these nanostructures. Vincent Rotello, Charles A. Gossemann Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is making a significant contribution to this body of knowledge.