One of the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s Signature Initiatives is Sustainable Manufacturing. With over $20 billion invested in nanotechnology research and development by the US government since 2000 [1], there is now an emphasis on transitioning from primarily fundamental research to work aimed at overcoming the barriers preventing these technologies from being successfully produced and integrated into devices manufactured at an industrial scale.

To date, much focus has been placed on the technical barriers to commercialization. However, other barriers outside of the lab must also be addressed in order to achieve broad commercialization of nanotechnology. The Public Policy Research Center (PPRC) at Boise State Unviersity is conducting a case study of a partnership between Boise State University, Micron Technologies, and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Scalable Nanomanufacturing (SNM) program. These three partners are examining the use of DNA nanostructures in semiconductor memory manufacturing. The PPRC aims to investigate policy and cultural barriers to commercialization in the context of this project and to gain a greater understanding of such issues relative to nanotechnology and other emerging technologies developed through academic-industry partnerships.

This case study uses interviews with principal investigators, university administrators, and other stakeholders in the project (at Boise State, Micron, and Harvard) to collect their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of university-industry partnerships and of scaling nanotechnology in manufacturing.