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Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the living world around us is the nearly infinite diversity of form and function. At the molecular scale, this diversity is, if anything, even more astounding, showing us that it is possible to use a small number of simple building blocks, like the amino acids that make up proteins, to build incredibly complex molecular-scale machines.

The ability to mimic nature’s methods and integrate them directly with advances in nanotechnology and solid-state electronics design would have a broad impact on our society, leading to such discoveries as a molecular cure for disease, a sensor for a toxin or a complex molecular matrix for computing or display.

The Center for BioOptical Nanotechnology integrates biology and biochemistry with materials engineering, nanotechnology and solid-state electronics to develop novel devices for use in biomedicine, environmental remediation, threat detection, and agriculture.

The center’s work is strengthened by ASU’s decades-long leadership in the study of photosynthesis and associated photochemical reactions through the ASU Photosynthesis Center. As a result, the university has amassed a formidable set of resources, both physical and intellectual, enabling it to probe and manipulate chemical and biological systems with light in specific and sophisticated ways.

In addition, ASU has long-standing expertise in micro-and nanofabrication in the Center for Solid State Engineering Research at the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. It also has burgeoning capability in molecular evolution and molecular assembly. This provides a basis for a revolution in the design of complex molecular systems that can communicate directly with the power of the solid-state electronics world that has developed over the past half century. This revolution promises to give rise to:

• Sensors: Arrays of molecular-scale elements that measure the amounts of hundreds of different compounds in blood, urine, waste streams, drinking water, food, or air.
  
• Catalysts: Molecules that specifically and efficiently carry out a broad range of chemical reactions resulting in clean energy storage and usage, cheaper and purer pharmaceuticals, and ”green” chemical processing.
  
• New materials: Biocompatible coatings for artificial organs, ”smart” surfaces that change properties depending on the environment, coatings that resist that kill bacteria and viruses without toxicity to other organisms.
  

• Photochemistry/photobiology
• Molecular evolution
• Molecular-scale devices
• Nanoscale hybrid electronics