NANOTECHNOLOGY, the science of manipulating matter at the molecular and atomic scales, is bringing revolutionary changes to the world of electronics. Now, a Seattle-based team of scientists, engineers and venture capitalists believes their year-old start-up company, Modumetal Inc., will use the technology to revolutionize a process that hasn't changed much since the industrial revolution - the production and use of metals. The company believes it can produce materials that are substantially lighter and stronger than steel.

If successful, the 11-member company could save lives by replacing the traditional protective body and vehicle armor used by the military with a lighter, more durable metal. In fact, putting the metal to work for the military is Modumetal's immediate goal as the United States struggles in Iraq to defend against such instruments of asymmetrical warfare as improvised explosive devices.

"We're working every day to develop a system that can help alleviate that problem," says Christina Lomasney, co-founder, president and CEO of Modumetal, who has a personal stake in the potential military applications: Two of her five brothers serve in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Meanwhile, the broader commercial applications are tantalizing. The metal the company is developing could be used in everything from cars and airplanes to garage tools and household products, infusing them with lighter and more durable properties, extending their shelf life and saving on a variety of costs, including fuel. Imagine making your own bold geopolitical statement by driving an SUV that is vastly lighter and sturdier than current models, and therefore conserves more fuel, treads lightly on the earth and is much safer to drive.

Modumetal uses a computer-controlled process to "grow" hunks of metal from the ground up. That enables it to make the same piece of metal harder in one area and softer in another area, depending on the particular characteristic best suited to that purpose. Using such metals in car doors and hoods, for example, would have certain advantages over traditional homogeneous steel, because the metals could be modified precisely to make them stiff in places where the car needs structural strength to protect the passenger, for example, and soft in areas where such flexibility might protect a pedestrian who is hit.

Defense contractors could design and build body armor and armored vehicles that are unusually lightweight and extremely tough. That would allow them to avoid trading the mobility of lighter materials for the durability of heavy materials. "Weight is a major concern right now," Lomasney says. "Humvees are not designed to carry the armor they're carrying." Body armor currently uses ceramic, a material that is lightweight and tough but also expensive and more likely to crack from multiple impacts.

The metal parts grown by the company incorporate different kinds of materials, such as iron and nickel, and are known as "nanolaminate" alloys. "It's metallic plywood," says John Whitaker, co-founder and chief technology officer for the company. "We don't use wood; we use metal. We can have hundreds of thousands of plies."

The company has secured $800,000 in financing from the Seattle venture firm Second Avenue Partners and angel investors, and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Carol Mutter has joined the company's advisory board. Moreover, the research arm of the Defense Department, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, chose Modumetal to participate in its Armor Challenge, a program to develop armor systems that perform as well in ballistic tests as rolled homogeneous armor steel at half the weight.

Meanwhile, Modumetal helps boost the credibility of Washington state as it competes with places like Boston and Silicon Valley to become a nanotechnology leader. The University of Washington is home to the Center for Nanotechnology, launched in 1997. And the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and Boeing are all plowing ground in the field.