Science & Technology
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December 5, 2005 - Volume 83, Number 49
- p. 58
Innovation
RIKEN Bets On Risky Projects With Big Potential
Amanda Yarnell
Courtesy of Shigenori Fujikawa |
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Artificial Fossil Kunitake's team uses a sol-gel process to coat a template of rectangular rods (top) with an ultrathin film of titanium dioxide. Removal of the template yields hollow tubes with ultrathin titanium dioxide walls (bottom). |
How are new scientific fields and technologies born? RIKEN's Frontier Research System (FRS) has its own formula: Give scientists fixed-term, well-funded contracts to pursue risky, potentially big-impact goals. FRS Director Kohei Tamao hopes that FRS's current gambles in nanoscience, materials, advanced spectroscopy, and biological imaging will pay off in the same way its risky bets on neuroscience in the 1990s gave birth to RIKEN's world-renowned Brain Science Institute.
One of FRS's largest investments now is in nanoscience. At its Wako campus, FRS is funding more than 20 labs pursuing a wide array of nanoscience research, from the growth of metal nanowires, to the development of microscopes that will probe materials with nanometer-order spatial resolution, to the analysis of lipid architecture in biological membranes. For instance, Reizo Kato's lab recently figured out a way to cover conductive nanowires with a supramolecular 1-nm-thick insulating layer. This supramolecular coating may find use in high-density wiring, Kato says. And Masahiko Hara's lab is trying to develop organic thin films that mimic the dynamic behavior of living systems. Such materials “may have functions that we can't yet appreciate,” Hara says.
FRS is also betting on materials research. Toyoki Kunitake and Shigenori Fujikawa have developed a sol-gel process to copy template structures such as nanometer-size rectangular rods into hollow tubes with ultrathin titanium dioxide walls. RIKEN has licensed this metal-oxide deposition technology to Tokyo Ohka Kogyo in Kanagawa, Japan, Kunitake notes. The pair recently developed a method to use such tubes to make metal oxide lines less than 10-nm wide that could be useful in the chip-making industry, Kunitake tells C&EN.
Two new FRS projects were introduced this year. Katsumi Midorikawa's interdisciplinary group in Sendai, several hours north of Tokyo, is developing terahertz spectroscopy for explosives detection, medical diagnostics, noninvasive inspection of semiconductor circuit boards, and environmental monitoring. And Tamao himself, an organic chemist, is leading a push to develop new radiolabeled small-molecule tracers for biological imaging by positron emission tomography.
“Chemistry and the life sciences are two of RIKEN's strongest fields,” Tamao says. His group-which will be based in Kobe, an hour north of Osaka-hopes to develop efficient ways to make radiolabeled versions of drug candidates that can be used to evaluate their metabolism in humans. “These tools will accelerate drug candidate evaluation,” he says.
Long Live RIKEN
At 88, Japan's premier research institute thrives but struggles with global isolation.
Rooted in Chemistry
RIKEN Bets On Risky Projects With Big Potential.
Innovation
Despite Its Expanded Mission, RIKEN Continues Its Rich History Of Chemical Research.
Strategically Located
RIKEN's five institutes are located on Honshu, Japan's largest island.
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