Perhaps we should say an Institute of Nanotechnology as there seem to be a number of them these days (there are also quite a few Nanoforums, but still only two Cientificas).
One of the major problems with carbon nanotubes is that they can be metallic or semiconducting, and there is as yet no reliable way of controlling what you get. For many applications this doesnt matter too much, but for nanoelectronics, the difference between tiny wires or nanotransistors is crucial to all aspects of the functioning of the device. Researchers at the Institute of Nanotechnology of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe have been awarded the prestigious Helmholz Prize (along with 50,000 euros) for their discovery that “in an alternating electrical field with a frequency of 10 million Hertz, the metallic and the semiconducting nanotubes drift in opposite directions and can hence be separated. The non-metallic tubes stay in the solution.”
Of course placing the newly separated nanotubes in the circuit one by one wont make a useful device any time soon, but being able to separate nanotubes according to their conductivity could make a large difference to anyone attempting to produce highly conductive polymers.