Our adventure into the world of nanoscience began roughly two years ago. Of course, like any adventurers we had been preparing ourselves for some time. We created a vision in 2004, and we studied nanotechnologies in smaller projects. When the time was right, we had a group of ten experienced researchers that were ready to take on the challenge. The Nokia Research Center (NRC) Nano Sciences laboratory was formed in January 2007. Today we are already eighteen persons, and you can multiply our number by three to get the size of our joint research team, including the PhD students and postdocs, working on our projects.

Nanoscience means a capability to study and accurately control the physical properties of nanostructures with single-molecule precision. In practice, this means that we need some of the most sophisticated tools developed by humankind. Our collaboration with the Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Cambridge has opened up this opportunity for us. In Cambridge we have created our office inside the Nanoscience Centre of the University, and are literally sitting just beside the cleanroom and the various microscopes.

Along the way we have also learned the basics about such a close and open collaboration: we have formed a shared vision, the shared research interest has created natural links between the researchers, we have defined clear roles and responsibilities, and our objectives begin to align with those of our university partners. Easy things to say but we have needed a lot of time and patience to implement these and to build mutual trust.

This past spring has been an amazing experience for our research teams. Our concept of Morph, created together with the University of Cambridge and our colleagues from Nokia Design, was a huge media success; and we only relayed a part of our vision. What the Morph concept does not show is that we have also made rapid progress in our experimental work. With the Helsinki University of Technology the problem of hysteresis in the FETs based on random networks of metallic carbon nanotubes was solved. With the University of Cambridge we have created novel battery and super-capacitor electrodes based on a new carbon nanostructure that has an extremely high surface area. Alan Colli’s publication of silicon nanowire lithography was mentioned as a research highlight in the prestigious Nature magazine. We are steadily progressing in building a very strong nanoscience competence.

Lately we have worked to streamline our research focus and team structures. We have two key targets in mind: 1) to bring autonomous sensing and computing into any physical object in the world, and 2) to enable the mobile devices of our imagination - transformable, transparent, stretchable, wearable, intelligent, desirable. The scope of our Cambridge UK Laboratory is now expanding to cognitive science and biotechnologies to build the true bridges between the physical and digital worlds, between the future technologies and the human being, between our physical environment and the digital services.

And now we are posting the first of a series of Nokia Technology Insights papers, and the topic at hand for this first edition is Nanoscience. The goal of the series is to help those of you outside Nokia to understand our perspectives, work areas and approaches to various segments of research within NRC. This paper in particular conveys our vision for the potential of nanoscience, and the nanotechnologies that will result out of it, to change the mobile landscape. For me, it represents a great encapsulation of our vision and illustrates examples of topics we are working on and hope to accomplish as we pursue our goals. We hope it helps convey our hopes and excitement around what is truly a bold new path for science and technology.

As a backdrop to all this, the spring this year in England was very beautiful. Never in my life I have seen such a multitude of trees in blossom. I have really enjoyed my life in Cambridge, cycling through the historic city center in the morning on my way to the office, having lunch at my college, meeting interesting people from companies and academia, and working with my fantastic team. After this first year here I have a feeling that we have just scratched the surface. The opportunity is so big, which is a little ironic given the topic at hand, but it’s exciting to know that the years to come have the chance to bring so much more.

Tapani Ryhänen
Head of NRC Cambridge UK Laboratory
Affiliated Lecturer, University of Cambridge