Start-up breeds better chips

ANALYSIS If start-up Cambrios is right, semiconductors and other computer parts in the future won't be built. They'll be bred.

The Californian company is using methods that will allow researchers to build semiconductors or other components by combining inorganic substances like cadmium sulphide with a vast library of genetically engineered organisms. Formerly known as Semzyme, Cambrios is officially unveiling its new name, strategies and venture backers this week.

In the vast majority of situations, combining a metal with a living virus or bacteria won't result in a breakthrough, but occasionally the chemical interaction between the metal and a protein from the organism produces elegant -- and potentially commercially attractive -- films or crystals, said chief executive Mike Knapp. A seashell, after all, is chalk that has reacted with specialised proteins.

"This is the way evolution works. You try lots of stuff and see what works," he said. "Proteins can manipulate things. We wouldn't survive as humans if our proteins didn't manipulate things atom by atom."

Researchers have long discussed techniques for adopting processes found in nature, but practical advances in nanotechnology appear to be inching closer to reality. U.K.-based Nanomagnetics is examining ways to make tiny, uniform memory cells out of proteins. Japan's Matsushita is conducting similar research. Other companies are looking at ways to harness photosynthesis for energy production.

In academia, the University of Bristol created the Centre for Organised Matter Chemistry under Professor Steven Mann, who pioneered research in this area in the early 1990s. Montana State held a conference on biomineralisation this week.

"Generally, people are looking for applications," said Eric Mayes, chief executive of Nanomagnetics. "It is mainly academics in the area" right now.

Although it has only eight employees, Cambrios is one of the companies at the centre of the research activity in this area. The company grew out of work performed by two of the pioneers in the field, Angela Belcher, a professor of material science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Evelyn Wu, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. (One of Belcher's graduate research projects examined how proteins control the growth and structure of abalone shells. She also studied under Mann.)