Russians position for nanotech future

RUSSIAN pledges to spend billions in public funds to develop its nanotechnology industry are being treated cautiously by leading British technology companies.
President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will channel 318bn rubles (£6.3bn) into the development of a nanotech infrastructure to increase exports of products built in Russia using the technology.

Oxford Instruments, a British nanotechnology company, said, however, that that it may take time for the cash to become available.
Frazer Anderson, a business development director, from its Bristol-based plasma technology division, said: "Their timescales are a lot longer than ours. If they say $10bn, they probably will do that over the next 10 to 15 years." He added: "If you see big numbers it's excellent but the reality is that it does not always come to pass."
However, Mr Anderson said his company had seen an increase in technology spending from governments worldwide as part of their fiscal stimulus packages.
"We do see President Obama putting more into solar and solid-state lighting. We see that in China. India is on photovoltaics," he said.
This trend had led to more demand for Oxford's equipment. The technology is used to create thin-film or nano-tech devices in everything from the motion sensors in the Nintendo Wii games console to Osram light-emitting diode lights and pure research at institutes such as MIT and Harvard, and Max Planck in Germany.

Source: telegraph.co.uk