Bromley: not neglecting small science

The budget puts the National Sci­ence Foundation back on track to doubling its funding by 1994, with an 18% increase to $2.7 billion. And in contrast to previous years, Brom­ley says, this year the increase is finding its way down to basic sci­ence, with a 16% increase to $2.1 bil­lion for the conduct of research. At the National Institutes of Health, ba­sic research funding would rise 7% to $5.5 billion, which he says will allow for an increase of 9% in re­search project grants for individual investigators.

Bromley also expects individual investigators to be the principal beneficiaries of the requested in­crease of 71%, to $125 million, for the Department of Agriculture's na­tional research initiative. He expects a similar benefit from a requested rise of 34%, to $903 million, for an expanded energy technology R&D program that emphasizes displacing oil in the transportation sector, im­proving energy efficiency in build­ings and industry, and advancing new electricity technologies.

Another major emphasis in this year's budget is mathematics, sci­ence, and engineering education at precollege through postdoctoral lev­els. The 1992 budget includes $1.94 billion for this area—an increase of $225 million, or 13%, over the 1991 budget. Moreover, the $1.94 billion represents the first coordinated in­teragency budget in science and

mathematics education that has ever been produced by the federal gov­ernment.

Budget details for this area are presented in a report issued last week by the Committee on Educa­tion & Human Resources (CEHR), under the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering & Technology. A product of seven months of deliberations by the 16-agency CEHR, the report includes detailed budget crosscuts going back to fiscal 1990, as well as program de­scriptions from all participating agencies or institutions.

The report, which is titled "By the Year 2000," reflects one of the na­tional goals set by the President and state governors following a 1989 ed­ucation summit: "By the year 2000, U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement." Says Secretary of En­ergy James D. Watkins, CEHR chair­man: "This budget puts resources where they can do the most to reach the goals—in precollege education, with greatest emphasis on our teach­ers."

Missing from the 1992 budget proposal is any major initiative de­signed to address the research infra­structure problem. In fact, the bud­get requests no funding at all to con-t inue NSF's new $20 mi l l ion Research Facilities Modernization Program.

Janice Long

Path to mass-produced, low-cost lasers opened Scientists at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland have de­veloped technology making it possi­ble to fabricate up to 20,000 diode lasers on a 5-cm diameter semicon­ductor wafer. This is the first time, IBM says, that it's been possible both to mass-produce and to test the so-called semiconductor lasers on a complete wafer.

For the electronics industry, this achievement could lead to mass-pro­duced, low-cost lasers for compact disc players, laser printers, magneto-optic read-write data storage discs, and fiber-optic data transmission systems. For chemists, it could lower

the cost of powerful absorption- and fluorescence-based detectors for aca­demic, industrial, and clinical diag­nostic instruments, which also could incorporate fiber optics.

"This is super-significant," physi­cal chemistry professor Richard N. Zare of Stanford University tells C&EN. "The ability to make diode la­sers much the way one makes chips offers the possibility of a revolution­ary reduction in the price of lasers." And although these diode lasers emit 30- to 40-MW light from 830 to 850 nm—which is near-infrared—pas­sage through nonlinear optical media could shift that to 415 to 425 nm, a useful, visible range for analytical chemistry. Says Zare, "If we have cheap blue light that's coherent, we'll be able to do all types of chemical analyses."

The team at the IBM lab in the Zu­rich suburb of Ruschlikon, led by Peter Vettiger, deposited layers of aluminum gallium arsenide epitaxi-ally onto gallium arsenide wafers to form the direct band-gap junctions and optical resonators of lasers. The team used reactive ion-beam etching to incise trenches 400- to S00-iim long and 5- to 6-Atm deep through lithographic resists. It coated these with a semitransparent reflective material to act as mirrors.

In each laser, passage of a current produces light, which is reflected back and forth between mirrors and finally passes out of the device through the semitransparent reflec-

5-cm-diameter wafer holds 5000 lasers

February 11, 1991 C&EN 5

News of the Week

tive medium. The IBM scientists also fabricated waveguides and photo-diodes next to each laser on wafer surfaces. Thus all lasers could be tested for flaws simultaneously on the uncut wafers in an automated system.

In the future, the technique could be used to combine lasers with other components on optoelectronic chips that use both light and current to process and transmit data. Among such components are concave mir­rors to focus laser light, and convex mirrors to dilate beams for more effi­cient coupling into thicker optical fi­bers.

Stephen Stinson

Computational chem system aims at industry A new software system for computa­tional chemistry aimed especially at industrial users was introduced by Cray Research of Eagan, Minn., last week at the Supercomputing Europe '91 conference in Stuttgart, Germany.

The system, called UniChem, was developed jointly by Cray and a consortium of major chemical and pharmaceutical companies—includ­ing Du Pont, Eli Lilly, Exxon Re­search & Engineering, 3M, and Monsanto. "The result is a software environment developed and tested by chemists for use by chemists," says John A. Rollwagen, Cray chair­man and chief executive officer.

Quantum chemistry software has been developed mostly in academia and has been used more widely there than in industry. "But now it's becoming a tool for the industrial chemist," says Erich Wimmer, tech­nical director of chemistry applica­tions at Cray, "so we need to re­spond to [those] needs."

However, UniChem can also be used outside industry. For example, Scripps Clinic & Research Founda­tion, a nonprofit research group, has ordered it. To use UniChem, scien­tists must either have a Cray super­computer at their facility or gain ac­cess to a shared supercomputer facil­ity over a network.

UniChem combines a series of quantum mechanics programs un­der a graphical user interface. The

programs are MNDO90, a semiem-pirical program applicable to mole­cules of up to about 500 atoms; DGauss, a density functional pro­gram for molecules and clusters of up to 200 atoms; and CADPAC, an ab initio program for systems of up to 60 atoms. No molecular mechan­ics or molecular dynamics codes are currently included, but molecular structures from other programs can be imported into the system.

A major advantage of UniChem is that it provides a single, interactive user interface for all its programs. Until now, Cray says, computational chemists have had to learn a com­pletely different set of commands for each such program, necessitating "extensive training and study for each tool before they are able to do productive work."

One knowledgeable source in the field of computational chemistry, who requested anonymity, believes Cray faces an uphill battle market­ing the new system: "Scientists would prefer to control their own computing environment. They've never liked central computing cen­ters, and the Cray is essentially a central-computing-center situation."

However, replies David A. Dixon, research leader at Du Pont Central Research & Development, "When you want to do really big problems, you have to go to a big machine. What this technology will let you do is communicate from your desktop workstation to run a big problem when you have to."

Stu Borman

U.S. offers greenhouse emissions strategy As international negotiations aimed at a global climate protection treaty got under way last week, the Bush Administration disclosed its strate­gy, which it claims will hold U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in the year 2000 at or below 1987 levels.

Environmentalists immediately criticized the strategy, calling it "nothing new" and "a smokescreen" designed to obscure the U.S/s failure to commit itself to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. "The U.S. is just counting up things that are already

happening," says Daniel F. Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program.

The U.S. "action agenda" is out­lined in a glossy pamphlet stamped with the Presidential seal that was distributed to delegates from more than 130 nations attending the first negotiating session of the Intergov­ernmental Negotiating Committee on a Framework Convention on Cli­mate Change (INC). The United Na­tions has charged the group—now meeting for 10 days in Chantilly, Va.—with drafting a general treaty to be ready to be signed in June 1992 (C&EN, Feb. 4, page 5).

In a letter to the delegates, Presi­dent Bush described the U.S. strate­gy as "a series of actions which will have broad-ranging benefits—from curbing air pollution, to conserving energy, to restoring forest lands— and which will help curb net green­house-gas emissions."

The plan tallies the benefits for greenhouse gas reductions of certain policies that the U.S. is already com­mitted to undertaking. Those policies include phasing out chlorofluorocar-bons and other ozone-depleting com­pounds, reducing air pollutants un­der the Clean Air Act amendments enacted last year, encouraging ener­gy conservation, and accelerating re­search into nonfossil fuels.

Under the strategy, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide—the principal greenhouse gas—are projected to rise about 15% over the next 10 years. But the Administration ex­pects the sharp decline in CFC emis­sions to offset the growth in carbon dioxide.

However, last year the UN's Inter­governmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that worldwide carbon dioxide emissions must be cut 50 to 80% to stabilize the atmo­sphere. "There is no substitute for C0 2 emissions reductions from the U.S.," Becker stresses. "C02 is what all the other industrialized nations are committing to reduce."

No agreement on such conten­tious issues is expected at the first INC meeting. The delegates are set­ting up working groups and will re­convene in Geneva in May for the next of a total of five scheduled ses­sions.

Pamela Zurer

6 February 11, 1991 C&EN