NANOTECHNOLOGY CURRENT INNOVATIONS

Nanotechnology Benefits

2011-08-16T19:59:00.001-07:00

Nanotechnology is impacting businesses and will offer new and improved products and processes and will allow companies to innovate and enter new markets - below are some examples.

Nanotechnology Applications:

Advanced Manufacturing
• Benefits: Controlled manufacturing processes, economical and high output with low cost.
• Applications and Uses: faster electronics, new material development

Aerospace
• Benefits: CO2 reduction, lighter materials, move to less fuel consumption cost savings, improved functionality of materials, minimising risk, flexibility and new systems
• Applications and Uses: nanocomposites, advanced sensors, faster electronics for data processing

Agriculture
• Benefits: higher crop yields, reduction in the use of pesticides and improved water management
• Applications and Uses: nanoparticles for removing contamination, moisture sensors, detection of pathogens

Automotive
• Benefits: CO2 reduction, lighter materials, move to less fuel consumption
• Applications and Uses: Lubricant / hydraulic additives, nanoparticles in catalytic converters, fuel cells, hydrogen storage

Chemical Industries
• Benefits: reduction of waste and CO2 reduction
• Applications and Uses: fuel cells, nanoparticles as catalysts

Construction
• Benefits: lower energy needs, CO2 reduction
• Applications and Uses: Thermal insulation, Energy storage devices

Cosmetics
• Benefits: UV protection, enhanced delivery of medicated skin products
• Applications: clear sunscreens, beauty care products, Cosmeceuticals, Nutraceuticals

Creative Industries
• Benefits: Bioinspired product development
• Applications and Uses: changing effects, advanced display systems

Defence
• Benefits: better detection and surveillance techniques,
• Applications and Uses: body armour, chemical and biological sensors

Electronics
• Benefits: providing faster, smaller and enhanced hand held devices
• Applications and Uses: Advanced display technologies with conductive nanomaterials, quantum computing, data storage, printable and flexible electronics, magnetic nanoparticles for data storage

Energy/Power
• Benefits: New materials for energy harvesting and storage
• Applications and Uses: DC-DC power converters, fuel cells, nanocomposites for high temperature applications

Environment
• Benefits: CO2 reduction and clean-up
• Applications and Uses: Air and water filtration, waste and water treatment, hazourdous materials disposal, in-building environmental systems, remediation

Extreme Environment
• Benefits: De-icing,
• Applications and Uses: Advanced textiles, stronger materials

Food and drink packing
• Benefits: tracking, quality monitoring and anti-counterfeiting, provides enhanced information on product and is environmentally friendly
• Applications and Uses: improved barrier properties and heat-resistance, anti-microbial and anti-fungal packaging, smart sensing, biodegradable packaging

Healthcare
• Benefits: better patient care and understanding of biological processes
• Applications and Uses: Nanoparticulate drug delivery, Nanosilver dressings, Fluorescent biological labels

Household products
• Benefits: self-cleaning, anti-bacteria and anti-fouling properties
• Applications and Uses: water and air purification systems, deodorizers and anti-misting systems

Low Carbon Technologies
• Benefits: environmentally friendly with the goal to reduce CO2 production
• Applications and Uses: energy storage devices

Marine
• Benefits: products to improve transportation
• Applications and Uses: Anti-fouling coatings, sensors,

Materials
• Benefits: Stronger and lightweight materials, functionalised materials
• Applications and Uses: Anti-fouling coatings, Nanotube polymers, printed electronics

Oil and Gas
• Benefits: Safety monitoring, improved oil recovery, well management
• Applications and Uses: nanoparticles, novel sensors

Safety
• Benefits: employee monitoring, advancing imaging, better testing, new characterisation methods
• Applications and Uses: PPE equipment, stronger materials

Security
• Benefits: tagging and tracking, monitoring, advancing sensors technology, improved RFID technology
• Applications and Uses: body armour, combating fraud with nanoparticle based inks

Sporting Goods and recreation
• Benefits: Stronger and durable products, enhanced fabrics, textiles embedded with sensors
• Applications and Uses: tennis balls, tennis rackets, hockey sticks

Textiles
• Benefits: hospital garments, emergency clothing and PPE, fashion on demand
• Applications and Uses: Stain-resistant fabrics, self cleaning and anti-bacterial coatings, protection and detection, healthcare, new wearable textiles incorporating solar cells, sensors and self cleaning properties

Tourism
• Benefits: enhanced displays and user interfaces
• Applications and Uses: airport information kiosk

The History Of Recent Nanotechnology Discoveries

2011-08-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

What are the genuine and provable developments in the science of Nanotechnology which are or will shortly be in practical use?

What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is the science of engineering machines at the molecular level. It has permitted the restructuring of some matter at the atomic level. It will eventually permit the restructuring of any matter at the atomic level. Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Richard Feynman forwarded the earliest theories of modern day Nanotechnology. True Nanotechnology where we can basically make anything out of nothing is predicted to be here anywhere from 5 to 15 years. As R&D progresses exponentially, it will probably be here in 3-4 years. You will be able to use a unit similar in appearance to a microwave to produce any material thing out of thin air.

What are its most recent ground breaking discoveries in Nanotechnology?

One easily comprehended and appreciated device made possible by Nanotechnology is the Nanotube. A Nanotube is stronger than diamonds but thinner than the human hair - fifty thousand times thinner than the human hair to be exact. This particular Nano-creation is being considered for a multiplicity of uses including but not limited to flat screen TV and computer monitor tubes and a cable to outer space to run vehicles on.

From the Nanotube technology is being developed to help write circuit boards to create the Nano-computers that are eagerly longed for.

The Nanobelt is a discovery which will enable microscopic conductivity, speeding the arrival of miniature everything (everything electrical anyway). Made of oxide dust particles, these are the purest, cleanest uniform wires yet developed and highly praised for their possible applications.

Nanofilms have been developed with properties that increase the durability and versatility of films and coatings for various microscopic uses yet to be determined.

Nanoparticles are a discovery that will enable direct absorption in the body of many medicines which could not hereforeto be so absorbed. We also now have the ability to send electric signals through molecules and measure amounts sent.

The existence of biological engines (molecular level biological machines that are naturally occurring) and their use in non-biological sciences has also been discovered. There are literally small machines occurring naturally in living organisms that do things; these machines are being adapted.

What does this mean to you and your future?

In the simplest terms, we will have control of this life beyond all levels of imagination in every facet of it. Here is some of the breakdown.

Electronically

Conductivity will be sent through anything, to anything, for any imaginable or unimaginable purpose. Much smaller computer chips working together in and with every part of our bodies, minds and environments will be common place. Note the commercials for the imbedded computer chips already available.

Mechanically

Together with other sciences Nanotechnology will make things far beyond that of Star Trek possible and even common place. Beam you up? Beam you anywhere, absolutely.

Biologically

DuPont has already designed and built a unique protein that is not a duplicate of an existing protein. Eventually catalysts will be developed to speed many common or uncommon chemical reactions making manufacturing infinitely more time and cost effective. Customized DNA already exists thanks to chemical divisions of Nanotechnology.

Plants (living organisms) will be developed which will in and of themselves be producers of wholly complete medicinal drugs. The plants themselves will be complete pharmacological manufacturers.

Eventually we will have available something close to immortality. The immune system itself will be able to be rebuilt from top to bottom, as will you. If there is time to restructure your cells before you die then you can live on. Only some accident or fate that leaves you dead before anything can be done would conceivably end your life. Otherwise your cells from top to bottom could be renewed again and again. And even then, if one day it is built in to humanity to replace ones own cells automatically, one would have to be utterly destroyed for ones life to end.

Any imaginable plant or animal life species could also be invented, altered or replicated.

As one science of Nanotechnology crosses over into another, we will have DNA level computers, the potential for genuine Cyborgs that replicate themselves (such as in Star Trek's The Borg) and countless other possibilities. Obviously the potential for evil use as well as good is as much there as with atomic power and atomic bombs. We survived the one; we should survive the other.

Future developments in the lifetimes of those now 40 years old and younger will likely include removing all pollutants from any manufacturing process, curing all diseases, and making all of us extremely wealthy by comparison with today's economy.

In the future we will be building Nano devices from the bottom up instead of from the top down. Where before we have tried to build machines smaller and smaller, we will look at the molecular machines already in existence in nature and adapt them.

Applications of Nanotechnology- A general view

2011-08-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

Physicists all over the world are concentrating on application oriented Physics rather than Fundamental Physics. The Physics of the Nanoworld is the latest field of active research in this century. The last few years has seen a gold rush to claim patents at the nanoscale. Over 800 nano-related patents were granted in 2003, and the numbers are increasing year to year. Corporations are already taking out broad-ranging patents on nanoscale discoveries and inventions. Corporations like NEC and IBM, hold the basic patents on carbon nanotubes, one of the current cornerstones of Nanotechnology. Carbon NanoTubes (CNT) have a wide range of uses, and look set to become crucial to several industries from electronics and computers, to strengthened materials to drug delivery and diagnostics. Hewlett-Packard has proposed the use of a Nanomaterial called "Memristor" as a future replacement of Flash memory.

What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology, shortened to "nanotech", is the study of controlling of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures sized between 1 to 100 nanometer in at least one dimension, and involves developing materials or devices within that size. One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10−9 of a meter. By comparison, typical Carbon-Carbon Bond-Lengths, or the spacing between these atoms in a molecule, are in the range 0.12–0.15 nm, and a DNA double-helix has a diameter around 2 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular life-forms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma are around 200 nm in length.

A number of physical phenomena become pronounced as the size of the system decreases. The electronic properties of solids are altered with great reductions in particle size. Quantum mechanical effects and Statistical mechanical effects become dominant when the nanometer size range is reached. A number of physical (mechanical, electrical, optical, etc.) properties change at such dimensions when compared to macroscopic systems. One example is the increase in surface area to volume ratio altering mechanical, thermal and catalytic properties of materials. Diffusion reactions at nanoscale, nanostructure materials and nanodevices with fast ion transport are generally referred to Nanoionics.

Mechanical properties of Nanosystems are of interest in the Nanomechanics research. Materials reduced to the nanoscale can show different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macro scale, enabling unique applications. For instance

1) Opaque substances become transparent (copper);

2) Stable materials turn combustible (aluminum);

3) Insoluble materials become soluble (gold).

4) A material such as gold, which is chemically inert at normal scales, can serve as a potent chemical catalyst at nano scales.

Much of the fascination with nanotechnology stems from these quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale.

Nanotechnology and Nanoscience got a boost in the early 1980s with two major developments: the birth of Cluster Science and the invention of the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM). This development led to the discovery of "Fullerenes" in 1985 and the structural assignment of "Carbon Nanotubes" a few years later. In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor Nanocrystals were studied. This led to a fast increasing number of Semiconductor nanoparticles and Quantum dots. Quantum dots are nanoscale objects, which can be used, among many other things, for the construction of lasers. The advantage of a Quantum dot laser over the traditional semiconductor laser is that their emitted wavelength depends on the diameter of the dot. Quantum dot lasers are cheaper and offer a higher beam quality than conventional laser diodes.

APPLICATIONS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanomedicine is the application of Nanotechnology in Medicine. The approaches to Nanomedicine range from the medical use of Nanomaterials to Nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of Molecular Nanotechnology. Nanomedicine predicts to deliver a valuable set of research tools and clinically helpful devices in the near future. The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NIN) expects new commercial applications in the pharmaceutical industry that may include advanced drug delivery systems, new therapies, and In-Vivo imaging. Neuro-electronic interfaces and other Nanoelectronic-based sensors are another active goal of research. Further down the line, the speculative field of Molecular Nanotechnology believes that cell repair machines could revolutionize medicine and the medical field.

Nanotechnology has been used in the medical field in delivering drugs to specific cells using nanoparticles. The overall drug consumption and side-effects can be lowered significantly by depositing the active agent in the morbid region only and in no higher dose than needed. This highly selective approach reduces costs and human suffering. Use of Dendrimers (Dendrimers are repeatedly branched, roughly spherical large molecules) and nanoparticles in Targeted and controlled drug delivery, is an emerging field of research called Nanobiopharmacuetics. The basic point to use drug delivery is based upon three facts: a) efficient encapsulation of the drugs, b) successful delivery of said drugs to the targeted region of the body, and c) successful release of that drug there.

NEMS (Nano Electro-Mechanical Systems) are being investigated for the active release of drugs in patients. Some potentially important applications include cancer treatment with iron nanoparticles or gold shells. A targeted or personalized medicine reduces the drug consumption and treatment expenses resulting in an overall social benefit by reducing the costs to the public health system. Nanotechnology is also opening up new opportunities in implantable delivery systems, which are often preferable to the use of injectable drugs, because the latter frequently display first-order kinetics (the blood concentration goes up rapidly, but drops exponentially over time). This rapid rise may cause difficulties with toxicity, and drug efficacy can diminish as the drug concentration falls below the targeted range.

In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel Corporation, made the outstanding prediction that the number of transistors that could be fit in a given area would double every 18 months for the next ten years. This it did and the phenomenon became known as "Moore's Law" This trend has continued far past the predicted 10 years until this day, going from just over 2000 transistors in the original 4004 processors of 1971 to over 700,000,000 transistors in the Core2 Processor. There has, of course, been a corresponding decrease in the size of individual electronic elements, going from millimeters in the 60's to hundreds of nanometers in modern circuitry of this millennium. In 1999, the ultimate CMOS transistor developed at the Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology in Grenoble, France, tested the limits of the principles of the MOSFET transistor with a diameter of 18 nm (approximately 70 atoms placed side by side). This was almost one tenth the size of the smallest industrial transistor in 2003 (130 nm in 2003, 90 nm in 2004, 65 nm in 2005 and 45 nm in 2007). It enabled the theoretical integration of seven billion junctions on a €1 coin. However, the CMOS transistor, which was created in 1999, was not a simple research experiment to study how CMOS technology functions, but rather a demonstration of how this technology functions on a molecular scale. Manufacturers like NANTERO have developed a Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) based crossbar memory called Nano-RAM. Carbon nanotubes are electrically conductive and due to their small diameter of several nanometers, they can be used as field emitters with extremely high efficiency for field emission display (FED). The principle of operation resembles that of the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) but on a much smaller length scale. The production of displays with low energy consumption could be accomplished using CNT.

In the modern communication technology traditional analog electrical devices are increasingly replaced by optical or Optoelectronic devices due to their enormous bandwidth and capacity, respectively. Two promising examples are Photonic Crystals and Quantum Dots. Photonic crystals are materials with a periodic variation in the refractive index with a lattice constant that is half the wavelength of the light used. They offer a selectable energy band gap for the propagation of a certain wavelength. Thus they resemble a semiconductor, though not for electrons, but for Photons. Nanolithography is that branch of nanotechnology, which deals with the study and application of fabrication of nanoscale structures like semiconductor circuits. As of 2007, Nanolithography has been is a very active area of research in academia and in industry.

Quantum Computers use the Laws of Quantum Mechanics for computing fast quantum Algorithms. The Quantum computer has quantum bit memory space termed "Qubit" for several computations at the same time. This facility may improve the performance of the older systems.

An inevitable use of nanotechnology will be in heavy industry. Lighter and stronger materials will be of immense use to aircraft manufacturers, leading to increased performance. Spacecraft will also benefit, where weight is a major factor. Nanotechnology would help to reduce the size of equipment and thereby decrease fuel-consumption required to get it airborne.

Another useful application is Nanobatteries. Because of the relatively low energy density of batteries the operating time is limited and a replacement or recharging is needed. The huge number of spent batteries and accumulators represent a disposal problem. The use of batteries with higher energy content or the use of rechargeable batteries or Super- capacitors with higher rate of recharging using Nanomaterials could be helpful for the battery disposal problem.

The most prominent application of nanotechnology in the household is self-cleaning or "easy-to-clean" surfaces on ceramics or glasses. Nanoceramic particles have improved the smoothness and heat resistance of common household equipment such as the flat iron. The use of engineered nanofibers already makes clothes water- and stain-repellent or wrinkle-free. Textiles with a nanotechnological ‘finish' can be washed less frequently and at lower temperatures. Nanotechnology has been used to integrate tiny carbon particles membrane and guarantee full-surface protection from electrostatic charges for the wearer.

New foods are among the nanotechnology-created consumer products coming onto the market at the rate of 3 to 4 per week, according to the ‘Project on emerging Technologies' (PEN), based on an inventory it has drawn up of 609 known or claimed nano-products. On PEN's list are three foods -- a brand of canola cooking oil called Canola Active Oil, a tea called Nanotea and a chocolate diet shake called Nanoceuticals Slim Shake Chocolate. According to company information posted on PEN's Web site, the canola oil, by Shemen Industries of Israel, contains an additive called "nanodrops" designed to carry vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals through the digestive system and urea. The shake, according to U.S. manufacturer RBC Life Sciences Inc., uses cocoa infused "NanoClusters" to enhance the taste and health benefits of cocoa without the need for extra sugar.

The joint use of Nanoelectronics, Photolithography and new biomaterials provides a possible approach to manufacturing Nanorobots for common medical applications, such as for surgical instrumentation, diagnosis and drug delivery. Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or Robots at or close to the microscopic scale of a Nanometer (10−9 meter). Another definition is a robot that allows precision interactions with nanoscale objects, or can manipulate with nanoscale resolution. Following this definition even a large apparatus such as an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) can be considered as a Nanorobotic instrument when configured to perform Nanomanipulation. Also, macro-scale robots or microrobots that can move with nanoscale precision can also be considered Nanorobots. Nanomachines are largely in the research-and-development phase, but some primitive molecular machines have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, capable of counting specific molecules in a chemical sample.

There has been much debate on the future implications of Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the potential to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of issues as with the introduction of any new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of Nanomaterials and their potential effects on global economics. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulations on Nanotechnology are warranted. Calls for tighter regulation of nanotechnology have occurred alongside a growing debate related to the human health and safety risks associated with nanotechnology. Reflecting the challenges for ensuring responsible life cycle regulation, the "Institute for food and Agriculture Standards" has proposed that, the standards for nanotechnology research and development should be integrated across consumer, worker and environmental standards. They also propose that NGOs and other citizen groups play a meaningful role in the development of these standards.

So what does this all mean? Right now, it means that scientists are experimenting with substances at the nanoscale to learn about their properties and how we might be able to take advantage of them in various applications. Engineers are trying to use nano-size wires to create smaller, more powerful microprocessors. Doctors are searching for ways to use nanoparticles in medical applications. Still, we've got a long way to go before nanotechnology dominates the technology and medical markets.

Nanotechnology – the new threat to food

2011-08-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Following on from genetic engineering, nanotechnology represents the latest high technology attempt to infiltrate our food supply. Senior scientists have warned that nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, introduces serious new risks to human and environmental health. Yet in the absence of public debate, or oversight from regulators, unlabelled foods manufactured using nanotechnology have begun to appear on our supermarket shelves.

Around the world there is an increase in interest in our food, health and environment. Where are products produced, how, why, by whom, how far have they travelled, how long have they been stored etc. The organic and local food movements have emerged as an intuitive and practical response to the increasing use of chemicals in food production, and to the growing alienation of industrial agribusiness from holistic agricultural systems. People have chosen to eat organic foods because they care about the health of their families and the health of the environment. Organic agriculture also enables people to support integrated, environmentally friendly agriculture, and appropriate technology, rather than chemical-intensive factory farming.

Support for organics has also grown as a direct response to biotechnology giants’ efforts to genetically engineer our food crops. Farmers and food buyers around the world were, and continue to be, enraged by the introduction of genetically engineered food crops. For many, the inevitable conclusion was that whereas the biotechnology companies stood to benefit from the entry of genetically engineered foods into the food chain, consumers, farmers and the environment shouldered all the risks.

Now, nanotechnology introduces a new wave of assaults on our foods. Nanotechnology is the high technology, atomically processed antithesis to organic agriculture, which values the natural health-giving properties of fresh, unprocessed wholefoods. It further transforms the farm into an automated extension of the high technology factory production line, using patented products that will inevitably concentrate corporate control. It also introduces serious new risks for human health and the environment.

Introduction to nanotechnology – what is it, why is it different

Nanotechnology is a powerful new technology for taking apart and reconstructing nature at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotechnology embodies the dream that scientists can remake the world from the atom up, using atomic level manipulation to transform and construct a wide range of new materials, devices, living organisms and technological systems.

Nanotechnology and nanoscience involve the study of phenomena and materials, and the manipulation of structures, devices and systems that exist at the nanoscale, <100 nanometres (nm) in size. To put 100nm in context: a strand of DNA is 2.5nm wide, a protein molecule is 5nm, a red blood cell 7,000 nm and a human hair is 80, 000 nm wide.

The properties of nanoparticles are not governed by the same physical laws as larger particles, but by quantum mechanics. The physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles – for example, colour, solubility, strength, chemical reactivity and toxicity - can therefore be quite different from those of larger particles of the same substance.

The altered properties of nanoparticles have created the possibility for many new profitable products and applications. Engineered nanoparticles are used in literally hundreds of products that are already available on supermarket shelves – including transparent sunscreens, light-diffracting cosmetics, penetration enhanced moisturisers, stain and odour repellent fabrics, dirt repellent coatings, long lasting paints and furniture varnishes, and even some food products.

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Centre for Technology Foresight has predicted that nanotechnology will revolutionise all aspects of our economy and all aspects of society, with associated large-scale social upheaval.

How will nanotechnology be used for food production and processing?

Industry analysts and proponents predict that nanotechnology will be used to transform food from the atom up: “Thanks to nanotechnology, tomorrow’s food will be designed by shaping molecules and atoms. Food will be wrapped in “smart” safety packaging that can detect spoilage or harmful contaminants. Future products will enhance and adjust their color, flavor, or nutrient content to accommodate each consumer’s taste or health needs. And in agriculture, nanotechnology promises to reduce pesticide use, improve plant and animal breeding, and create new nano-bioindustrial products” – or so states the US Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies’ recent report on the use of nanotechnology in food and agriculture (available at http://www.nanotechproject.org).

The food and agriculture industries have been investing billions of dollars into nanotechnology research, with an unknown number of unlabeled nano food products already on the market. In the absence of mandatory product labelling anywhere in the world, it is impossible to tell how many commercial food products now contain nano ingredients. The Helmut Kaiser Consultancy Group, a pro-nanotechnology analyst, suggests that there are now over 300 nano food products available on the market worldwide. It estimates that the global nano food market was worth US$5.3 billion in 2005 and will rise to US$20.4 billion by 2010. It predicts that nanotechnology will be used in 40% of the food industries by 2015.

There are four key focus areas for nanotechnology food research:
• Nano-modification of seed and fertilisers/ pesticides
• Food ‘fortification’ and modification
• Interactive ‘smart’ food
• ‘Smart’ packaging and food tracking

Nano-modification of seed and fertilisers/ pesticides

Proponents say that nanotechnology will be used to further automate the modern agribusiness unit. All farm inputs – seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and labour – will become increasingly technologically modified. Nanotechnology will take the genetic engineering of agriculture to the next level down – atomic engineering. Atomic engineering could enable the DNA of seeds to be rearranged in order to obtain different plant properties including colour, growth season, yield etc. Highly potent atomically engineered fertilisers and pesticides will be used to maintain plant growth. Nano-sensors will enable plant growth, pH levels, the presence of nutrients, moisture, pests or disease to be monitored from far away, significantly reducing the need for on-farm labour inputs. The concerned organisation, The Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) warns in its seminal report “Down on the Farm” (available at http://www.etcgroup.org), in a nanotechnology shaped future, “the farm will be a wide area biofactory that can be monitored and managed from a laptop and food will be crafted from designer substances delivering nutrients efficiently to the body”.

Food ‘fortification’ and modification

Nanotech companies are working to fortify processed food with nano-encapsulated nutrients, its appearance and taste boosted by nano-developed colours, its fat and sugar content removed or disabled by nano-modification, and ‘mouth feel’ improved. Food ‘fortification’ will be used to increase the nutritional claims that can be made about a given processed food – for example the inclusion of ‘medically beneficial’ nano-capsules will soon enable chocolate chip cookies or hot chips to be marketed as health promoting or artery cleansing. Nanotechnology will also enable junk foods like ice cream and chocolate to be modified to reduce the amount of fats and sugars that the body can absorb. This could happen either by replacing some of the fats and sugars with other substances, or by using nanoparticles to prevent the body from digesting or absorbing these components of the food. In this way, the nano industry could market vitamin and fibre-fortified, fat and sugar-blocked junk food as health promoting and weight reducing.

Interactive ‘smart’ food

Companies such as Kraft and Nestlé are designing ‘smart’ foods that will interact with consumers to ‘personalise’ food, changing colour, flavour or nutrients on demand. Kraft is developing a clear tasteless drink that contains hundreds of flavours in latent nanocapsules. A domestic microwave could be used to trigger release of the colour, flavour, concentration and texture of the individual’s choice. ‘Smart’ foods could also sense when an individual was allergic to a food’s ingredients, and block the offending ingredient. Or alternatively, ‘smart’ packaging could release a dose of additional nutrients to those which it identifies as having special dietary needs, for example calcium molecules to people suffering from osteoporosis.

‘Smart’ packaging and food tracking

Nanotechnology will dramatically extend food shelf life. Mars Inc. already has a patent on an invisible, edible, nano wrapper which will envelope foods, preventing gas and moisture exchange. ‘Smart’ packaging (containing nano-sensors and anti-microbial activators) is being developed that will be capable of detecting food spoilage and releasing nano-anti-microbes to extend food shelf life, enabling supermarkets to keep food for even greater periods before its sale. Nano-sensors, embedded into food products as tiny chips that were invisible to the human eye, would also act as electronic barcodes. They would emit a signal that would allow food, including fresh food, to be tracked from paddock to factory to supermarket and beyond.

What are the key concerns about nanotechnology in food and agriculture?

Concerns about the use of nanotechnology in agriculture and food production relate to the further automation and alienation of food production, serious new toxicity risks for humans and the environment, and the further loss of privacy as nano surveillance tracks each step in the food chain. The failure of governments to introduce laws to protect the public and the environment from nanotechnology’s risks is a most serious concern.

Nanotechnology in agriculture is based on the premise that we can improve efficiency and productivity by rearranging atoms in seeds, by developing even more potent chemical inputs, by using high technology surveillance to allow electronic, rather than person-based surveillance of on-farm conditions, and by further automating inputs to plant growth. Applications of nanotechnology to food processing assume that humans can ‘improve’ the taste, texture, appearance, nutritional content and longevity of food by manipulating it at the atomic level. It has even been argued that this will result in food that is ‘safer’.

These assumptions are based on a flawed belief that humans can remake the natural world from the atom up – and get a better result. It assumes that we can predict the consequences of our actions, even when we are dealing with highly unpredictable processes and forces – such as quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, history tells us that we are simply not very good at predicting the outcomes of complex systems – witness the disasters that resulted from the introduction of biological controls such as the Cane Toad, or the introduction of rabbits and foxes for sport. History is similarly littered with examples of huge health and environmental problems that resulted from the failure to respond to early warning signs about previous perceived “wonder” materials such as CFCs, DDT and asbestos. This suggests that we should take the early warning signs associated with the toxicity of nanoparticles very seriously.

There is a small but growing body of toxicological literature that suggests that nanoparticles are more reactive, more mobile, and more likely than larger particles to be toxic to humans and the environment. Preliminary scientific research has shown that many types of nanoparticles can result in increased oxidative stress which can result in the formation of free radicals that can lead to cancer, DNA mutation and even cell death. Fullerenes, carbon nanoparticles, have been found to cause brain damage in largemouth bass, a species accepted by regulatory agencies as a model for defining ecotoxicological effects.

In its 2004 report, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society recognised the serious risks of nanotoxicity and recommended that “ingredients in the form of nanoparticles should undergo a full safety assessment by the relevant scientific advisory body before they are permitted for use in products”. Despite this warning, two years after the Royal Society’s report, there are still no laws governing the use of nanomaterials in consumer products to ensure that they do not cause harm to the public using them, the workers producing them, or the environmental systems in which waste nanoproducts are released.

The use of nano-surveillance in food packaging will also introduce new privacy concerns. As the food industry’s use of nano-tracking increases, it will gain the capacity to track the movement of food from the paddock, to the factory, to the supermarket and to your dinner plate. This will raise serious new privacy issues for which we are poorly prepared.

Alarmingly, despite the release into supermarkets and into the environment of nano food and agriculture products, governments world wide have yet to introduce any regulation to manage nanotechnology’s risks.

The struggle for a healthy food future - what are the alternatives to nanotechnology?

What will our food and technological future look like? We are in an epic battle for control of our food supply. Corporate or community ownership, global or local, small versus massive, processed versus wholesome. These are the paradigms that we need to choose between. A key way to promote healthy, holistic agriculture is to support it with our purchasing choices. Certified organic foods offer you better health, a better environment and a way for you to support a nano-free food future. With personal care products, buy organic or from a company that states they do not use nanotechnology.

There are many ways to help create a healthy food future. Shop at a farmers market or buy from a box scheme direct from a farmer, buy from an organic store or from the organic section in a supermarket. Consider joining a community garden, or starting a garden of your own. Start an organic kitchen garden at your pre school or school. Read product labels, get involved and interested. Talk to your friends and family about the food issues that matter most to you. Let companies know through their 1800 feedback lines that you are concerned about the use of nanotechnology in their products. Tell your local member of parliament that you want to see products that contain engineered nano ingredients labelled to allow you to make an informed purchasing choice.

It is exciting to see food politics debated by our mainstream media and our research and education institutions. However while there are already unlabelled food products that contain engineered nano ingredients available in our supermarkets, nanotechnology is only just starting to gain some attention. There are no regulations in place to protect public and environmental health, and almost no corporate or public monies being spent looking at the long-term consequences of manipulating our food at the atomic level. The similarity to the introduction of genetic engineering with the added risk that there is no regulatory oversight is chilling.

We must all get politically active on nanotechnology just as we did with genetic engineering. It is essential that we get moratoria enacted on the use of nanotechnology until we have regulatory systems in place to protect human and environmental health, and until we have genuine public involvement in decision making regarding nanotechnology’s introduction. We must also ensure our Governments put our hard-earned taxpayer dollars into support for the organic sector.

Together, we can create a healthy food future that delivers to our community not corporate profits.

Nanotechnology (general)

2011-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

In layman's terms, nanotechnology refers to materials, applications and processes designed to work on extremely tiny scales. A nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometres thick, while a single gold atom is about one-third of a nanometre in diameter.

Many unique properties and uses can be derived from structures built at the nanoscale, giving nanotechnology enormous potential for future development.

A relatively new and emerging field of science, nanotechnology was first alluded to in 1959, but remained largely theoretical until the 1980s. The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) allowed the first direct manipulation of individual atoms.

Carbon nanotubes were demonstrated in 1991. These cylindrical structures were found to possess exceedingly high strength and unique electrical properties, as well as being highly efficient thermal conductors.

Various other structures were developed over the following two decades, each built on an atom-by-atom basis.

Today, nanotechnology is among the fastest growing areas of science and technology, with exponential progress being made. Just some of the recent breakthroughs have included:

• The first integrated circuits using three-dimensional carbon nanotubes. These could be vital in maintaining the growth of computer power, allowing Moore's Law to continue.

• Solar panels with greater efficiency through the use of nanotechnology materials.

• Water purification bottles, with filters only 15 nanometres in width, allowing military personnel and also civilians hit by disasters to create safe drinking water (even if that water comes from a filthy source).

• Military equipment made lighter and stronger through the use of nanomaterial composites.

• Nanostructured polymers in display technologies allowing brighter images, lighter weight, less power consumption and wider viewing angles.

• Nanotechnology surfaces which are highly resistant to bacteria, dirt and scratches.

• New fabrics that are highly resistant to liquid, causing it to simply fall off without leaving any dampness or stains.

• Nanostructured catalysts used to make chemical manufacturing processes more efficient, saving energy and reducing waste products.

• Pharmaceutical products reformulated with nanosized particles to improve their absorption and make them easier to administer.

There are many other applications and the list is growing all the time. By 2025, nanotechnology is expected to be a mature industry, with countless mainstream products.

Further into the future, nanotechnology will play a major role in medicine and longevity. Blood cell-sized devices will go directly into the human body, eradicating pathogens and keeping people healthy. Full-immersion virtual reality and other advanced concepts will become possible through the use of these "nanobots".

Meanwhile, so-called "nanofabricators" would allow the creation of macro-scale objects on an atom-by-atom basis. Home appliances using this technology could serve as 3-D printers - downloading products from the web and literally building them from scratch. Physical items would each have their own code or algorithm that would program the machine to create them.

Quantum computers, invisibility cloaks and space elevators may one day become a reality, thanks to nanotech.

In the more distant future, nanotechnology could allow humans to make the transition to fully non-biological forms. Entire bodies and brains could be reconstructed at the atomic scale, leading to practical immortality.

Much debate has taken place on the implications of nanotechnology. It has the potential to create radically new materials and devices with a vast range of applications in engineering, medicine, electronics and energy production. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as with any introduction of new technology - including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is required.

Electrical Engineering and relation on Nanotechnology

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1. INTRODUCTION

Nanotechnology has affected nearly every field of Engineering and Science but most of the innovation and funding (private) in Nanotechnology came from Electronics giants, in search for making faster computers. The other fields that worked with nano electronics hand in hand were nano-photonics and nano-instrumentation. Also the marketing and making of nano gadgets started from the computers and mobiles which are the only machines made at nano scale that were available economically in the market at a very early stage. So it is of no doubt that the only area where nanotechnology penetrated deeply is electronics where it had lead to cost advantage and performance attributes especially in transistors and today we have 1 billion transistors in the latest processor. The backbone of nanotechnology in electronics are the results that we have taken from nano physics that is quantum physics and solid state physics because then we talk of things at nano scale these are the two stream of physics that helps us in predicting things. Eventually when we talk of electronics it is all about electrons and how we use them in various gadgets to get the required result. So it is very important to know electrons and how it behaves at nano scale in electronics.

Introduction and Importance Quantum Mechanics A fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics is the particle-wave duality, introduced by De Broglie, according to which any particle can be associated with a matter wave whose wavelength is inversely proportional to the particle's linear momentum. Whenever the size of a physical system becomes comparable to the wavelength of the particles that interact with such a system, the behavior of the particles is best described by the rules of quantum mechanics. All the information we need about the particle is obtained by solving its Schrodinger equation. The solutions of this equation represent the possible physical states in which the system can be found. But quantum mechanics is not required to describe the movement of objects in the macroscopic world. The wavelength associated with a macroscopic object is in fact much smaller than the object's size, and therefore the trajectory of such an object can be excellently derived using the principles of classical mechanics. Things change, for instance, in the case of electrons orbiting around a nucleus, since their associated wavelength is of the same order of magnitude as the electron-nucleus distance. We can use the concept of particle-wave duality to give a simple explanation of the behavior of carriers in a semiconductor nanocrystal. In a bulk inorganic semiconductor, conduction band electrons (and valence band holes) are free to move throughout the crystal, and their motion can be described satisfactorily by a linear combination of plane waves whose wavelength is generally of the order of nano-meters. This means that, whenever the size of a semiconductor solid becomes comparable to these wavelengths, a free carrier confined in this structure will behave as a particle in a potential box. The solutions of the Schrodinger equation in such case are standing waves confined in the potential well, and the energies associated with two distinct wave functions are, in general, different and discontinuous. This means that the particle energies cannot take on any arbitrary value, and the system exhibits a discrete energy level spectrum. Transitions between any two levels are seen as discrete peaks in the optical spectra, for instance. The system is then also referred to as ''quantum confined''. The main point here is that in order to rationalize (or predict) the physical properties of nanoscale materials, such as their electrical and thermal conductivity or their absorption and emission spectra, we need first to determine their energy level structure.

2. THEORY OF NANO-ELECTRONICS

2.1 PRESENT STATE OF NANO-ELECTRONICS. Moore's law states that the number transistor on an integrated chip for a component doubles every two years. How ever this law does not holds perfectly true for RAM (Random Access memory). This does not mean that the number of transistor on a chip increases but about the density of transistors at which the cost per transistor is the lowest.Currently processors are fabricated at 90nm and 65nm that are being introduced by Intel. The 90 nanometer (90 nm) process refers to the level of semiconductor process or fabrication technology that wasachieved in the 2002-2003 period, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM etc. However it is not true for RAM and hard disk. New materials seeing possible use in nano-electronics and will probably keep this law on track. The future is seen as molecular electronics but there is lots of work still to be done to make that possible.

2.2 SILICON NANOTECHNOLOGY
2.2.1 CMOS Nanotechnology

For the past several decades, miniaturization in silicon integrated circuits has pro- gressed steadily with an exponential scale described by Moore's Law. This incredible progress has generally meant that critical dimensions are reduced by a factor of two every three years, while chip density increases by a factor of four over this period. However, modern chip manufacturers have been accelerating this pace recently, and currently chips are being made with gate lengths in the 45 to 65 nm range. More scaling is expected, however, and 15-nm gate lengths are scheduled for production before the end of this decade.

In MOSFET there is electric field between the gate and the semiconductor is such that an inverted carrier population is created and forms a conducting channel. This channel extends between the source and drain regions, and the transport through this channel is modulated by the gate potential. As the channel length has gotten smaller, there has been considerable effort to incorporate a variety of new effects into the simple (as well as the more complex) models. These include short-channel effects, narrow width effects, degradation of the mobility due to surface scattering, hot carrier effects, and velocity overshoot. Ballistic transport in the MOSFET (discussed in later part) Thermodynamics is just as significant in limiting scaling as the preceding effects. The first way it limits scaling is in its control of the subthreshold behavior of MOSFETs. The subthreshold current of a MOSFET originates in the high-energy tail of the statistical distribution of carriers in its source region. The carriers in the source are governed by Fermi-Dirac statistics, and so the tail of the distribution is essentially Boltzmann.
There two major scattering regions - the barrier between the channel and the source and within the channel.

There also exists a phenomenon Granularity is the failure of thermodynamic averaging in small devices. Quantum behavior in the device, there are two effects and Effective Carrier Wave Packet . These effects also include tunneling through the gate insulator, tunneling through the band gap, quantum confinement issues, interface scattering, discrete atomistic effects in the doping and at interfaces, and thermal problems associated with very high power densities.
Ballistic Properties:-
It is the phenomenon where the the contribution in electrical resistivity due to scattering by the atoms, molecules or impurities in the medium itself, is negligible or absent meaning the electron can move without hindrances. There is no loss of kinetic energy due to collision of hitting of electrons with atom of metal thereby electrons move in a mean free path where it can move freely.

Quantum mechanical scaling limitations include both confinement effects and tun- neling effects. Confinement effects occur when electron or hole wave functions are squeezed into narrow spaces between barriers. In FETs this primarily happens in the channel, where the charges are squeezed between the gate insulator on one side and the built-in field of the body on the other side. Quantum confinement in this approximately triangular well raises the ground state energy of the electrons or holes, which increases the threshold voltage, and shifts the mean position of the carriers a little farther from the Si-SiO2 interface. Quantum mechanical tunneling is generally more detrimental to scaling than the Confinement effects. When electrons or holes tunnel through the barriers of the FET, it causes leakage current. As scaling continues, this ultimately causes unacceptable increases in power dissipation. The leakage may also cause some types of dynamic logic circuits to lose their logic state, but the former problem usually seems to arise first.

There are primarily two forms of tunneling leakage: tunneling current through the gate insulator, and tunneling current through the drain-to-body junction. The atomistic effects that cause limitations to scaling are those in which the discreteness of matter gives rise to large statistical variations in small devices. These statistical variations occur because the atoms or molecules tend to display Poisson statistics in their number or position, and the Poisson distribution for small numbers can become very wide.
2.2.2 Memory
As the semiconductor device feature size enters the sub-50-nm range, two new effects come into play. One is the quantum effect, which is rooted in the wave nature of the charge carriers, and gives rise to non classical transport effects such as resonant tunneling and quantum interference. The other is related to the quantized nature of the electronic charge, often manifested in the so-called single-electron effect: Charging each electron to a small confined region requires a certain amount of energy in order to overcome the Coulomb repulsion; if this charging energy is greater than the thermal energy, kb*T (kb Boltzman constant, T temperature), a single electron added to the region could have a significant effect on other electrons entering the confined region.

To increase the storage density of semiconductor memories, the size of each memory cell must be reduced. A smaller memory cell also leads to higher speed and lower power consumption. This is the incentive for studying the nanoscale semiconductor memory. One of the general schemes for semiconductor data storage is by storing charges on a capacitor. The charged state and the uncharged state can be used to represent binary information 1 and 0, respectively. Usually charges are transferred to the capacitor through a resistive. The motivation for this work is to investigate the ultimate limit of a floating gate MOS memory. In a conventional floating gate memory, there are typically on the order of 10 to power 4 electrons stored on the floating gate to represent one bit of information. The ultimate limit in scaling down the floating gate memory is to use only one electron for the same purpose, hence the name "single-electron MOS memory" (SEMM). The advantage of such a memory is that not only can it be very small, but also it can provide some unique characteristics that are not available in the conventional device, such characteristics as quantized threshold voltage shift and quantized charging voltage.

To make single-electron memory practical, both thermal fluctuation and quantum fluctuations of the stored charge have to be minimized. In order to reduce the variation in the device structure, we would like to build a single-electron memory device in crystalline silicon that has well-controlled dimensions. We defined the transistor channel and the floating gate by using lithography. Finally, the single-electron memory potentially has a number of advantages over conventional memories: (1) the quantized characteristics of the device make it immune to the noise from the environment-unless the noise level reaches a certain threshold, it will not affect the memory state. The immunity to noise is especially important for the future terabits integration, simply because of the sheer large number of devices present on a single small chip area. (2) the inherent quantized nature of the SEMM makes it possible to easily implement multilevel logic storage in a single memory cell; (3) the device can operate at a higher speed due to the use of only one or few electrons during writing and erasing; (4) for the same reason, the device can also have ultralow power consumption.

2.3 NANO TUBES, CNT ELECTRONICS.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which are graphite cylinders made of a hexagonal carbon-atom lattice, have drawn a great deal of interests due to their Fundamental research importance and tremendous potential technical applications . For Example, they might play an important role in future molecular electronic devices, such as room-temperature single electron and field-effect transistors , and rectifiers . A SWNT can be either a semiconductor or a metal, depending on its helicity and diameter. The electronic properties of the SWNT have been the subject of an increasing number of experimental and theoretical studies since 1995. And it is expected that very soon SWNT will see it's application in Nano electronics. SWNT is going to see it's application in transistors where it can reduce the gate length and also reduce leakage current. SWNTs have very low electrical resistance. Resistance occurs when an electron get deflected away from its path, when it is traveling through a material. In a 3-D conductor, electrons have plenty of opportunity to scatter, since they can do so at any angle. All these scatterings will give rise to electrical resistance. The situation is different in 1D. In a truly 1D conductor, however, electrons can only travel forward or backward. Only backscattering will lead to electrical resistance. But backscattering in nanotubes is impeded by the special symmetry of graphite and carbon nanotubes, and is therefore less likely to happen. Because of this, electrons can travel in nanotubes for long distances without being scattered, and this type of ballistic transport has been observed experimentally

2.4 NANO WIRES

A nanowire is a wire of dimensions of the order of a nanometer. They are also called quantum wires because their properties are governed by quantum mechanics. They can be used to link or connect tiny component is nanocircuits. They are referred as 1 dimensional materials (because their length to width ratio is very high). The electrons here are quantum confined and occupy different energy levels than those of bulk material. They will see their application in electronics, opto-electronics and Micro Electro mechanical systems. They will be seeing possible applations in future molecular electronic devices, as resonant tunneling diodes, single-electron transistors, and field effect structures and also in making logic gates.

2.5 QUANTUM DOT

It is the semiconductor nanostructure which exhibits the phenomenon of confining motions of electrons of conduction, valence or excitons in all three spatial directions. They have superior quantum and optical properties and are being researched for diode laser, amplifier, sensors, etc. They are also seeing application in Light Emitting Diodes(Quantum Dot Single Electron Device). The ability to control electron charging of a capacitive node by individual electron makes there devices suitable for memory application. A quantum well is a potential well that confines particles, which were originally free to move in three dimensions, to two dimensions, forcing them to occupy a planar region.

3. MANUFACTURING CHALLENGES Nanofabrication is being developed to construct devices such as resonant tunneling diodes and transistors and single electron transistors and carbon nanotube transistors. The most common type of transistor being developed for use at the nanoscale is the field effect transistor. Economics issues are constraining nano-electronics to hit market. Two ways of manufacturing nano materials are:-

1. Bottom up self assembly (wet chemistry) In this type of fabrication we start from atoms or molecules to get to the desired material.
2. Top down self assembly (Lithography and derivatives) In this type of fabrication the bulk material is broken down into smaller pieces. Thought we have knowledge about many new materials and their physics at nanoscale but to get the technology economically available (cost effective) and to get the state of art levels of manufacturing nanomaterials is still under development.

Nanotechnology - Future uses

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It is difficult to predict when exactly nanotechnology assemblers or assembly stations will be operational to make nanotechnology a worldwide commercial reality. However here are a few potential results of the use of nanotechnology:

The replication of anything including water and food completely eliminating famine and poverty because production costs of nearly all products - including food - will drop to near-zero.

In the information technology industry, the smallest size of transistors on silicon microprocessors is about to reach it's limit. Moore's Law predicts that by about 2015 we must be working at the molecular level to advance. Nanotechnology will enable the development of a new generation of smaller more powerful components. In fact one of the specific goals of the U.S. government's nanotechnology initiative is to develop a memory device approximately the size of a sugar cube capable of storing all the information in the U.S. national library. PCs with comparable speeds of current equipment will be the size of a grain of sand and will be capable of operating for decades on one small battery. So effectively nanotechnology will make computers disappear; they will be in our bodies, clothing, refrigerators, buildings, absolutely everywhere. As materials will be engineered on the molecular scale they will incorporate computation in the same way that certain materials have a specific colour. Within the next 25 years scientists will have reverse-engineered the physical processes in the human brain that result in thought, which will lead to biologically inspired computer software (artificial intelligence) enabling materials to "think" for themselves.

In the medical industry, medicines could contain nanorobots programmed to destroy the molecular structure of cancer cells and viruses. Nanorobots could be used by surgeons to change your physical appearance or perform operations without leaving a scar. It may even be possible that nanorobots could slow or reverse the aging process. Nanotechnology and biotechnology will be combined to create ingestable systems that will be able to tell medics the location of diseased cells and the type of disease. At some point disease and genetic defects will be eliminated through the alteration of the body at the atomic level, effectively re-coding your DNA.

Environmentally friendly airborne nanorobots could be programmed to rebuild the ozone layer atom by atom. Water sources could be purified saving millions of lives and oil spillages could be removed quickly and completely. The dependence on the Earth's natural resources for our energy would also be eliminated and pollution would be a thing of the past because pollutants can be reduced to their component atoms and recycled.

For the hearing impaired nanotechnology machines will use advanced speech recognition to create subtitles automatically and on the fly. Blind people will have reading machines that could be incorporated into clothing that would use advanced text recognition allowing the user to read signs, menus, displays etc. Smilar nanotechnology devices will also be used to translate text information from one language to another.

Virtual reality will become much more life-like, glasses will be able to display images directly onto our retinas and contact lenses will allow full-immersion virtual reality.

The house of the future will use nanotechnology to be able to change colour to whatever you decide and generate more electricity than it consumes.
Aerospace and automotive materials will change substantially. Currently aluminium, nickel, and titanium alloys and carbon fibre composites are used but in the future materials made of lightweight, high-strength carbon nanotubes will be used. Carbon nanotubes are the world's strongest material in terms of tensile strength and they are lightweight and flexible. This will result in aircraft and cars being 100 times lighter and therefore would be much more fuel efficient. As the graphite (the carbon allotrope in the nanotubes) has a network of hexagonal rings it has many unpaired electrons. Therefore carbon nanotubes conduct electricity and heat amazingly well and are being considered for use as wires for nanosized electronic devices in future computers, charge-storage devices in batteries, and electron guns for semiconductor chip etching and flat-screen televisions and computer monitors. They also could store hydrogen gas to power fuel cells. Thus, there is intense interest in finding a way to produce nanotubes in large quantities.

Top 10 Uses of NanoTechnology in Food

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Nanoparticles may be able to detect bacteria, extend food shelf life, add health benefits, or improve flavor, reports Discovery.

While nanotechnology does not involve any genetic manipulation, many companies are keeping secret about their work their doing. While this can keep competitors off their trail, it can also make it difficult for regulatory agencies to manage risks and create laws for these emerging technologies.

Nonetheless, nanotechnology offers some exciting potential benefits for the quality and safety of our foods.

1. CONTAMINATION SENSOR: Flash a light to reveal the presence of E. coli bacteria.

2. ANTIMICROBIAL PACKAGING: Edible food films made with cinnamon or oregano oil, or nano particles of zinc, calcium other materials that kill bacteria.

3. IMPROVED FOOD STORAGE: Nano-enhanced barrier keeps oxygen-sensitive foods fresher.

4. ENHANCED NUTRIENT DELIVERY
Nano-encapsulating improves solubility of vitamins, antioxidants, healthy omega oils and other ‘nutraceuticals’.

5. GREEN PACKAGING: Nano-fibers made from lobster shells or organic corn are both antimicrobial and biodegradable.

6. PESTICIDE REDUCTION: A cloth saturated with nano fibers slowly releases pesticides, eliminating need for additional spraying and reducing chemical leakage into the water supply.

7. TRACKING, TRACING; BRAND PROTECTION: Nanobarcodes can be created to tag individual products and trace outbreaks.

8. TEXTURE: Food spreadability and stability improve with nano-sized crystals and lipids for better low-fat foods.

9. FLAVOR: Trick the tongue with bitter blockers or sweet and salty enhancers.

10. BACTERIA IDENTIFICATION AND ELIMINATION: Nano carbohydrate particles bind with bacteria so they can be detected and eliminated.

Nanotechnology – How it can be a Boon for curing critical ailments

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Gone are the days when the term ‘Nanotechnology’ could only be seen if someone went through the pages of some sci-fi novel. This term has proved to be a boon to the human civilization with lots of offerings, the most significant one being in the field of medical science. It has proved to be very helpful in curing critical Medical Ailments and has shown prospects of further growth in the near future which may see a rise of around $60 billion worth of demand for nano-medicines within 1-2 years.

What exactly is Nanotechnology?

Now you may be wondering what this entire buzz about nanotechnology is and what exactly it is. Basically nanotechnology can be described as a completely new field and dimension in applied science which enables to develop nano bots and medicines at the microscopic level. In the medicinal field, this nanotechnology is being used to store critical information in nanometer sized chips which ultimately helps in detecting several critical diseases. You can have your disease cured even without the use of surgery, something which one couldn’t think about in the recent past.

How can nanotechnology be helpful in curing diseases?

It is worth noting that most of the diseases we come across our lifetime, are mere external manifestations of some disturbances in the molecular or the cellular level. Now, if the roots of the disease are cured and taken off from the cellular level itself, we won’t need to have complicated surgeries at the macro level. This utility of nanotechnology steers it to the forefront in curing several disease starting from any kind of eye ailments to even cancer. One can make use of the polymerized contact lenses developed by Nano engineers in Singapore, which helps in curing glaucoma by releasing small amounts of medicine. The alma mater of the fact is that, due to miniscule size of the nano bots or medicines, they can provide efficient Drug Delivery systems to the affected cells.

Nanotechnology for Cancer –The deadly disease:

It is well said that when MRI, PET or CT fails to detect the metastatic dormant cancer cells, Nanotechnology comes to use. Right from detecting the sources of this disease to finding an effective solution to cure it, nanotechnology does it all. Various researches being carried out throughout the world reveal that nanotechnology can be the ultimate answer to this disease. By detecting the vibration patterns of some high frequency ultrasounds, doctors can now differentiate cancer cells from normal cells. Unlike chemotherapy which kills both the normal as well as the cancer cells, nanotechnology researchers are currently in the process of making a device to kill only the cancer cells.

The Final Verdict:

If someone is still waiting for my final verdict on this huge arena of applies science, then the only thing I may suggest to you is to go and have a look at the various researches being carried out at the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University and other independent research firms and go through the results. The pace with which this field of applied and translational science is moving, it will surely eradicate some of the very critical ailments in the coming few years.

Nano News & Research

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Researchers are working furiously to field defense nano technology for military application. Battle science laboritories are in hyperdrive to produce nanoscopic assemblers or nanogears to manipulate atomic matter and serve as replicators with endless production possibilities.

Nanobots and nano technology can be used to create innovative non woven textiles teeming with military potential. They offer promise as light weight ballistic protection, wound sealing properties, vitals tracking, and environmental adaptation to heating, cooling, and porous to non-porous membranes that can react to weather.

History

In the early 20th century, Henry Ford built a car manufacturing plant on a 2,000-acre tract of land along the Rouge River in Michigan . Built to mass-produce automobiles more efficiently, the Rouge housed the equipment for developing each phase of a car, including blast furnaces , a steel mill and a glass plant. More than 90 miles of railroad track and conveyor belts kept Ford's car assembly line running. The Rouge model was lauded as the most efficient method of production at a time when bigger meant better.

The size of Ford's assembly plant would look strange to those born and raised in the 21st century. In the next 50 years, machines will get increasingly smaller -- so small that thousands of these tiny machines would fit into the period at the end of this sentence. Within a few decades, we will use these nanomachines to manufacture consumer goods at the molecular level, piecing together one atom or molecule at a time to make baseballs, telephones and cars. This is the goal of nanotechnology . As televisions , airplanes and computers revolutionized the world in the last century, scientists claim that tactical nanotechnology will have an even more profound effect on the next century.

Nanotechnology is an umbrella term that covers many areas of research dealing with objects that are measured in nanometers . A nanometer (nm) is a billionth of a meter, or a millionth of a millimeter.

Building with Atoms
Atoms are the building blocks for all matter in our universe. You and everything around you are made of atoms. Nature has perfected the science of manufacturing matter molecularly. For instance, our bodies are assembled in a specific manner from millions of living cells.
Cells are nature's nanomachines. Humans still have a lot to learn about the idea of constructing materials on such a small scale. Consumer goods that we buy are made by pushing piles of atoms together in a bulky, imprecise manner. Imagine if we could manipulate each individual atom of an object. That's the basic idea of nanotechnology, and many scientists believe that we are only a few decades away from achieving it.
Nanogears no more than a nanometer wide could be used to construct a matter compiler, which could be fed raw material to arrange atoms and build a macro-scale structure.

Nanotechnology is a hybrid science combining engineering and chemistry. Atoms and molecules stick together because they have complementary shapes that lock together, or charges that attract. Just like with magnets, a positively charged atom will stick to a negatively charged atom. As millions of these atoms are pieced together by nanomachines, a specific product will begin to take shape. The goal of nanotechnology is to manipulate atoms individually and place them in a pattern to produce a desired structure. There are three steps to achieving nanotechnology-produced goods:

Scientists must be able to manipulate individual atoms . This means that they will have to develop a technique to grab single atoms and move them to desired positions. In 1990, IBM researchers showed that it is possible to manipulate single atoms. They positioned 35 xenon atoms on the surface of a nickel crystal, using an atomic force microscopy instrument. These positioned atoms spelled out the letters "IBM."

The next step will be to develop nanoscopic machines, called assemblers, that can be programmed to manipulate atoms and molecules at will. It would take thousands of years for a single assembler to produce any kind of material one atom at a time. Trillions of assemblers will be needed to develop products in a viable time frame.

In order to create enough assemblers to build

consumer goods, some nanomachines, called replicators , will be programmed to build more assemblers.

Trillions of assemblers and replicators will fill an area smaller than a cubic millimeter, and will still be too small for us to see with the naked eye . Assemblers and replicators will work together like hands to automatically construct products, and will eventually replace all traditional labor methods. This will vastly decrease manufacturing

costs, thereby making consumer goods plentiful, cheaper and stronger. In the next section, you'll find out how nanotechnology will impact every facet of society, from medicine to computers.

A New Industrial Revolution

In January 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton requested a $227-million increase in the government's investment in nanotechnology research anddevelopment, which included a major initiative called the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). This initiative nearly doubled America 's 2000 budget investment in nanotechnology, bringing the total invested in nanotechnology to $497 million for the 2001 national budget. In a written statement, White House officials said that "nanotechnology is the new frontier and its potential impact is compelling." About 70 percent of the new nanotechnology funding will go to university research efforts, which will help meet the demand for workers with nanoscale science and engineering skills. The initiative will also fund the projects of several governmental agencies, including the National Science Foundation , the Department of Defense , the Department of Energy , the National Institutes of Health , NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Much of the research will take more than 20 years to complete, but the process itself could touch off a new industrial revolution. Nanotechnology is likely to change the way almost everything, including medicine, computers and cars, are designed and constructed. Nanotechnology is anywhere from five to 15 years in the future, and we won't see dramatic changes in our world right away. But let's take a look at the potential effects of nanotechnology on military tactical gear:

The first products made from nanomachines will be stronger fibers. Eventually, we will be able to replicate anything, including diamonds , water and food. Famine could be eradicated by machines that fabricate foods to feed the hungry.

In the computer industry, the ability to shrink the size of transistors on silicon microprocessors will soon reach its limits. Nanotechnology will be needed to create a new generation of computer components. Molecular computers could contain storage devices capable of storing trillions of bytes of information in a structure the size of a sugar cube.

Nanotechnology may have its biggest impact on the medical industry. Patients will drink fluids containing nanorobots programmed to attack and reconstruct the molecular structure of cancer cells and viruses to make them harmless. There's even speculation that nanorobots could slow or reverse the aging process, and life expectancy could increase significantly. Nanorobots could also be programmed to perform delicate surgeries -- such nanosurgeons could work at a level a thousand times more precise than the sharpest scalpel. By working on such a small scale, a nanorobot could operate without leaving the scars that conventional surgery does. Additionally, nanorobots could change your physical appearance. They could be programmed to perform cosmetic surgery, rearranging your atoms to change your ears, nose, eye color or any other physical feature you wish to alter.

Nanotechnology has the potential to have a positive effect on the environment. For instance, airborne nanorobots could be programmed to rebuild the thinning ozone layer. Contaminants could be automatically removed from water sources, and oil spills could be cleaned up instantly. Manufacturing materials using the bottom-up method of nanotechno

logy also creates less pollution than conventional manufacturing processes. Our dependence on non-renewable resources would diminish with nanotechnology. Many resources could be constructed by nanomachines. Cutting down trees, mining coal or drilling for oil may no longer be necessary. Resources could simply be constructed by nanomachines.

The promises of nanotechnology sound great, don't they? Maybe even unbelievable? But researchers say that we will achieve these capabilities within the next century. And if nanotechnology is, in fact, realized, it might be the human race's greatest scientific achievement yet, completely changing every aspect of the way we live.

APPLICATION OF NANOTECHNOLOGY IN CIVIL ENGINEERING

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APPLICATION OF NANOTECHNOLOGY IN CONSTRUCTION
Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale.
Nanotechnology is concerned with objects between 1 and 100nm in size.( Nano meter)

1 Nanometer – 1 x 10-9m.

Applications of nano technology in civil engineering are numerous. Some of the applications are elaborated below.

Application in concrete:
Addition of nanoscale materials into cement could improve its performance. Use of nano-SiO2 could significantly increase the compressive for concrete, containing large volume fly ash, at early age and improve pore size distribution by filling the pores between large fly ash and cement particles at nanoscale. The dispersion/slurry of amorphous nanosilica is used to improve segregation resistance for self-compacting concrete. It has also been reported that adding small amount of carbonnanotube (1%) by weight could increase both compressive and flexural strength.

Cracking is a major concern for many structures. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is working on healing polymers, which include a microencapsulated healing agent and a catalytic chemical trigger. When the microcapsules are broken by a crack, the healing agent is released into the crack and contact with the catalyst. The polymerization happens and bond the crack faces. The selfhealing polymer could be especially applicable to fix the microcracking in bridge piers and columns. But it requires costly epoxy injection.

Application in Steel

Steel is a major construction material. Its properties, such as strength, corrosion resistance, and weld ability, are very important for the design and construction. It is possible to develop new, low carbon, highperformance steel (HPS). The new steel was developed with higher corrosion-resistance and weld ability by incorporating copper nanoparticles from at the steel grain boundaries.

Coating
The coatings incorporating certain nanoparticles or nanolayers have been developed for certain purpose. It is one of the major applications of nanotechnology in construction. For example, TiO2 is used to coat glazing because of its sterilizing and anti fouling properties. The TiO2 will break down and disintegrate organic dirt through powerful catalytic reaction. Furthermore, it is hydrophilic, which allow the water to spread evenly over the surface and wash away dirt previously broken down. Other special coatings also have been developed, such as anti-fraffiti, thermal control, energy sawing, antireflection coating.

Nanosensors
Sensors have been developed and used in construction to monitor and/or control the environment condition and the materials/structure performance. One advantage of these sensors is their dimension (10 -9m to 10-5m). These sensors could be embedded into the structure during the construction process. Smart aggregate, a low cost piezoceramic-based multi-functional device, has been applied to monitor early age concrete properties such as moisture, temperature, relative humidity and early age strength development. The sensors can also be used to monitor concrete corrosion and cracking. The smart aggregate can also be used for structure health monitoring. The disclosed system can monitor internal stresses, cracks and other physical forces in the structures during the structures’ life. It is capable of providing an early indication of the health of the structure before a failure of the structure can occur.

Applications Of Nanotechnology In Textiles And Other Fields

2010-10-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology is an emerging interdisciplinary technology that has been booming in many areas during the recent decade, including materials science, mechanics, electronics, optics, medicine, plastics, energy, electronics, and aerospace. Its profound societal impact has been considered as the huge momentum to usher in a second industrial revolution. The "nanD" in nanotechnolgy comes from the Greek word "nanos" that means dwarf. Scientists use this prefix to indicate 1 0-9 or one-billionth. One nanometer is one-billionth meter that is about 1 00,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair.

Nanotechnology endeavors are aimed at manipulating atoms, molecules and nanosize particles in a precise and controlled manner in order to build materials with a fundamentally new organization and novel properties. The embryo of nanotechnology is "atomic assembly", which was first publicly articulated in 1959 by physicist Richard Feynman. Nanotechnology is called a "bottom up" technology by which bulk materials can be built precisely in tiny building blocks, different from the traditional manufacture "top down" technology. Therefore, resultant materials have fewer defects and higher quality. The fundamentals of nanotechnology lie in the fact that properties of substances dramatically change when their size is reduced to the nanometer range. When a ulk material is divided into small size particles with one or more dimension (length, width, or thickness) in the nanometer range or even smaller, the individual particles exhibit unexpected properties, different from those of the bulk material. It is known that atoms and molecules possess totally different behaviors than those of bulk materials; while the properties of the former are described by quantum mechanics, the properties of the latter are governed by classic mechanics. Between these two distinct domains, the nanometer range is a murky threshold for the transition of a material's behavior. For example, ceramics, which normally are brittle, can easily be made deformable when their grain size is reduced to the low nanometer range. A gold particle of 1 nm across shows red color. Moreover, a small amount of nanosize species can interfere with matrix polymer that is usually in the similar size range, bringing up the performance of resultant system to an unprecedented level. These are the reasons why nanotechnology has attracted large amounts of federal funding, research activity and media attention. The textile industry has already impacted by nanotechnology. Research involving nanotechnology to improve performances or to create unprecedented functions of textile materials are flourishing. These research endeavors are mainly focused on using nanosize substances and generating nanostructures during manufacturing and finishing processes.

Nanotechnology - A Process of Evolution

2010-10-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Anyone that realizes that nanotechnology news and the headlines related to nano news are ever-changing, also must realize that nanotechnology is a field that is under the process of a rapid evolution. There are many new nanotechnology jobs currently opening up and anyone currently pursuing the study of Nanoscience is assured that there will be plenty of nano jobs in the future. New facilities and scientific teams are being established and assembled all the time, and the more advances that are made in the field of nanotechnology, the more promising the nano jobs outlook will be. Nano news headlines will continue to evolve as the field of nanotechnology evolves and reveals the endless discoveries and inventions being created by nanotech researchers from all over the world.

We need to be clear about the difference between Nanoscience and nanotechnology before we begin to note all of the advances being made in the field. First, Nanoscience is simply the study of nanostructures, while nanotechnology is the implementation and application of such understandings in various industries throughout the world. In the nanotechnology field, new students of Nanoscience will be entering into the industry in search of nano jobs that match their level of skill and educational focus. This shouldn't be a problem however as the food, medical, space, cosmetic, and electronic industries are turning to the use of nanotechnologies to improve upon industry operations, manufacturing, and processing.

The word Nanotechnology is making it on nanotechnology news headlines nearly every day. More universities are offering coursework and programs specifically for the pursuit of Nanoscience studies; this is to address the future demand for nanotech researchers and this is a positive sign for those seeking nanotechnology jobs, both now and in the future. Students of Nanoscience will primarily focus on the study of nanostructures and how such structures can be manipulated. When moving into the field of nanotechnology and working in various nanotechnology jobs, nano researchers will usually deal with two chief forms of nanotechnology: bottom up and top down nanotechnologies. The latter forms of nanotechnology refer to the directional operation of such workings; Top down nanotech work involves the miniaturization of structures while the bottom down nanotechnology field focuses on the enlargement of various structures.

So why are so many industries opening up new avenues for nano research, nanotechnology jobs, and development? If someone notes the latest nanotechnology news headlines it isn't too difficult to surmise; many of the advances in nanotech research are proving to benefit industries by helping them save money in production and manufacturing arenas. Cost saving processes of manufacturing are being continuously developed through nanotechnologies, and both industries and consumers are benefiting from the discoveries. New avenues of nanotech research are also paving inroads in the medical industries as innovative health treatments, diagnostic equipments and methods, and better treatments are being discovered as well. Since recent advances have exhibited a positive effect for industries and consumers, there is a push for more advances in the field of nano research.

Developments in nanotechnology are currently exhibiting a certain potential for aiding humanity and changing the world in which we live too. Nano research is being conducted presently that can be used in energy conversation efforts, as well as in filtering water so that people can have access to fresh, clean water in areas of the world where pure water is a true commodity. Thus, nanotechnology news will, undoubtedly, soon be revealing headlines about world wide use of nanotechnology. Those individuals interested in the future developments in the field of nanotech research need to monitor the headlines closely as new nano news emerges. It will allow those seeking nanotechnology information to remain informed, and current as far as an awareness about the latest developments as well as some of the existing controversy that surrounds the emerging discoveries in this exciting field.

NANOTECHNOLOGY IN MEDICINE

2010-10-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology, over recent years, has seen a surge in research activity, with great potential in a wide range of applications including drug delivery, diagnostics, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The development of tools like the scanning tunneling microscope and the atomic force microscope has enabled researchers to observe structures on the nanoscale, where materials may exhibit different properties due to their size.

Also, the development of new materials like carbon nanotubes and buckyballs, along with the improved understanding of the molecular processes linked to diseases has provided novel approaches in improving current therapeutic and diagnostic tools.

The majority of current commercial applications of nanotechnology to medicine are geared towards drug delivery to enable new modes of action, as well as better targeting and bioavailability of existing medicinal substances.

The aim of this paper is to present the various aspects, the benefits and disadvantages of nanotechnology in the field of medicine, considering drug delivery as a major aspect.

In drug delivery, nanotechnology is just beginning to make an impact. Many of the current "nano" drug delivery systems, however, are remnants of conventional drug delivery systems that happen to be in the nanometer range, such as liposome, polymeric micelles, nanoparticles, dendrimers, and nanocrystals.

The importance of nanotechnology in drug delivery is in the concept and ability to manipulate molecules and supramolecular structures for producing devices with programmed functions. The nanoparticles used for drug delivery present a mechanism to overcome the challenges posed by other drug delivery systems.

Some of the challenges of most drug delivery systems include poor bioavailability, in vivo stability, solubility, intestinal absorption, sustained and targeted delivery to site of action, therapeutic effectiveness, side effects, and plasma fluctuations of drugs which either fall below the minimum effective concentrations or exceed the safe therapeutic concentrations. However, nanotechnology in drug delivery is an approach designed to overcome these challenges due to the development and fabrication of nanostructures at submicron scale and nanoscale which are mainly polymeric and have multiple advantages. Generally, nanostructures have the ability to protect drugs encapsulated within them from hydrolytic and enzymatic degradation in the gastrointestinal tract; target the delivery of a wide range of drugs to various areas of the body for sustained release and thus are able to deliver drugs, proteins and genes through the peroral route of administration.They increase oral bioavailability of drugs due to their specialized uptake mechanisms such as absorptive endocytosis and are able to remain in the blood circulation for a longer time, releasing the incorporated drug in a sustained and continuous manner leading to less plasma fluctuations thereby minimizing side-effects caused by drugs.

Nanotechnology and it’s Benefits

2010-07-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology is a protective coating that enhances products of any sort of material. It can strengthen and improve the assets to benefit both manufacturers and end users. With the help of Nanotechnology, which is an applied science, new products are created to protect various materials.

Protective coating is a result of nanotechnology. It makes the materials weather resistant and the surface becomes easy to clean as well. Its protective coating exhibits very high resistance to corrosion attack, long term stability in aggressive conditions and an environmentally friendly, easy and economical preparation procedure.

Nanotechnology and its characteristics will be different in the case of each material surface and it is available with standard features and techniques. Nanotechnology uses more techniques and tools for its updating. Nanotechnology research has been made continuously to update technology using different techniques and tools available in the world. New technologies have been used to measure the molecular interactions that take place.

Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize the life of materials used in every sector be it industrial, residential, medicines, genetics, communication, textile and many more. It helps to improve products and production processes with better techniques and new functionality.

In coming years, products based on nanotechnology are expected to impact nearly all-industrial sectors and enter the consumer markets in large quantities. Considering the future prospects of nanotechnology, countries across the world are investing heavily in this sector. Diamon Fusion International is one such example that makes the optimum use of nanotechnology by providing glass protection,hydrophobic coating, protective coating to various materials depending on there characters.

Nanotechnology Applications for Electronics

2010-07-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology and electronics

Nanotechnology is already being used by the electronic industry and you will be surprised to know that many of today’s electronics have already incorporated many applications that the nanotechnology science has developed. For example, new computer microprocessors have less than 100 nanometers (nm) features. Smaller sizes mean a significant increase in speed and more processing capability.

These advances will undoubtedly help achieve better computers. However, at some point in time (very near in the future) current electronic technology will no longer be enough to handle the demand for new chips microprocessors. Right now, the method for chip manufacturing is known as lithography or etching. By this technology, a probe literally writes over a surface the chip circuit. This way of building circuits in electronic chips has a limitation of around 22 nanometers (most advanced chip processors uses 60-70 nm size features). Below 22 nm errors will occur and short circuits and silicon limitations will prevent chip manufacturing.

What's on the future?
Nanotechnology may offer new ways of working for electronics. Nanotechnology science is developing new circuit materials, new processors, new means of storing information and new manners of transferring information. Nanotechnology can offer greater versatility because of faster data transfer, more “on the go” processing capabilities and larger data memories.

A new field is emerging in electronics that will be a giant leap in computer and electronics science. It is the field of quantum computing and quantum technology. Quantum computing is area of scientific knowledge aimed at developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory. In quantum computing the “qbit” instead of the traditional bit of information is used. Traditionally, a bit can assume two values: 1 and 0. All the computers up-to-date are based on the “bit” principle. However, the new “qbit” is able to process anything between 0 and 1. This implies that new types of calculations and high processing speeds can be achieved.

Quantum computers have been more of a research area until now. But recently, the first quantum computer has been built in the United States, according to a recent paper published on the prestigious scientific journal Nature Physics. This new computer is said to achieve unseen processing speeds to the tune of a billion times per second, making this the fastest chip on earth.

Nanotechnology Applications for Healthcare: Treatment of Diseases

2010-07-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

There are well-established treatments for known diseases. However, when a new illness appears we should not be surprised to see an old-fashioned treatment meet little success. Nanotechnology can help to address the issue of treatments of both old and new diseases.

For starters nanotechnology can provide personalized medicine; that is, unique, individualized medications for each patient. Second, nanotechnology can help treat new diseases by designing new drugs, or by new ways of delivering known drugs. Also, it helps by reducing the risk of rejection or adverse reactions in implants.

Personalized Medicine
Drugs to treat diseases are a risky proposition. Individuals may react different to the same drug dose or even to the drug. Traditionally medicine has taken the “average” respond approach to treat diseases. However, an effective dose for one patient or a certain drug can be toxic for another individual.

As we know more about the human genome, we realize that there may be genes that predispose a patient to a certain disease or to a certain drug. Nanotechnology is helping in this area of illness treatment by designing and applying tools that can rapidly analyze and detect certain genes and gene sequences. In this way if a patient has a gene that predisposes him or her to a bad reaction then a new drug can be chosen for him. This is personalized medicine, medicine targeted to each patient.

New Methods of Drug Delivery
One of the issues with traditional medicine is the uncertainty of knowing whether the administered drug will reach the intended organ or area of the body. Nanotechnology helps to solve this issue because specific carriers can be designed for specific drugs so the drug goes right to the target organ and not to another one. For example in cancer therapies a specific nanoparticle formulation has been designed for the drug paclitaxel. The new formulation (nanoparticle plus drug) is less toxic than the free drug injected to the patient.

New Drugs
Certain drugs are difficult to make because of structural constraints. Nanotechnology can help design these drugs by using a controlled manufacturing system at the atomic and molecular level. In addition, the drug can be designed such as to eliminate the toxic part of it and leave the “effective” one. Currently, new asthma, HIV, And Cancer killing drugs are being designed using nanotechnology systems.

Implants
One of the issues with implants is the interaction of the new implant with biological tissues and cells of the patient. Sometimes adverse reactions occur, and although there are methods to minimize this, many implants fail because of body rejection of the new implant. Nanotechnology can offer some solutions in this area of health care. For example in bone implants were rejections can occur, titanium bone implants are being covered with a special nanocoat of nanostructured titanium dioxide which helps integrate the implant into the bone.

Application of Nanotechnology in Medicine

2010-07-24T07:29:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology is the branch of science which deals with the study of matter at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotechnology has diversity of applications for example it is used in the device physics as well as medicine. Medicine is one field which has made use of nanotechnology in its various applications. Though some of the techniques of nanotechnology in medicine are only just in the minds of the scientists, some techniques are under the development process and some are in the market successfully being used.

Some researchers refer nanotechnology as nanomedicine because nanoparticles are under development for medical purposes and some researchers use the term nanomedicine to make such nanorobots which can repair the damaged cells in the human body. But it is a fact that nanomedicine is playing an important role in detecting the diseases in the human body and is developing cures for them.

Nanotechnology and Drug Delivery:-
One of the most important applications of nanotechnology in medicine is the drug delivery. This application is still under development. It will help the doctors to inject the drug in the patient's body in the form of nanoparticles. The nanoparticles would also be used to heat or light the diseased cells such as cancer cells. The benefit of these particles is that they can target only those cells which are damaged and this way these cells can be treated without creating damage to the healthy human cells. Nanoparticles also make the earlier detection of the disease and doctors can find cure against the disease efficiently and rapidly.

Chemotherapy is the technique used to kill cancerous cells from the body. Now nanoparticles will deliver the drug of chemotherapy. Such drugs are under development and will be in the market soon. People who hate injections, there is a good news for them that now the drug will be encapsulated in the nanoparticles. This way the drug will easily pass from stomach into the bloodstream because of its smaller size. The techniques are being developed which will make drugs using nanoparticles and those drugs would be taken orally.

Nanotechnology and Diagnostic and Imaging Techniques:-
There is one more positive point about nanotechnology is that the quantum dots are now being used to detect tumors of cancers in the human body and are helpful in diagnosis tests. Though this technique is still in the experimental stages but it will be an efficient approach to treat cancer. Other nanoparticles like iron oxide are being used to do MRI of the cancer patients. The mechanism of treatment is that iron oxide is bound with a peptide. When they are released in the body, they bind to the cancer cells. Iron oxide contains the magnetic property and when it binds to the tumor, it shows images from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scan.

There are other applications of nanoparticles also that they can bind to the proteins or other molecules and help in the detection if the disease. But this method is still at the experimental level and will definitely provide efficient means of treating the diseases.

Nanotechnology and therapy techniques:-
Therapy techniques are also applying nanotechnology to improve their mechanisms. Buckyballs are the nano-substances which help to reduce the inflammation produced during an allergic reaction and have the ability to trap the free radicals which are produced during any allergic reactions. Similarly nanoshells are the substances which help destroy the cancerous cells from the body when the cells are heated by infrared light. They also avoid the damage to the surrounding healthy cells. One other use of nanoparticles is that they can be used to produce electrons which destroy the cancerous cells from the body and there are very less chances that the healthy cells will be affected. Nanoparticles can be applied in place of radiation therapy avoiding destruction of healthy cells.

The use of aluminosilicate nanoparticles in the trauma patients is very helpful because they have the ability to reduce bleeding by absorbing water. It results in the quick clot of blood because when the water will be absorbed from the blood, the blood will become dry.

Nanotechnology and Antimicrobial technique:-
Nanotechnology is also helpful in killing the microbes. Nanocrystalline silver is a nanoparticle which kills the microbes from the wound. Some nanoparticles are used to treat infections as they kill bacteria because of the presence of nitric oxide gas in them. When the cream is applied on the infection, nanoparticles release nitric oxide gas which kills the bacteria.

Nanostructured solar cells

2010-05-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Conversion into electrical power of even a small fraction of the solar radiation
incident on the Earth’s surface has the potential to satisfy the world’s energy demands without generating CO2 emissions. Current photovoltaic technology is
not yet fulfilling this promise, largely due to the high cost of the electricity produced. Although the challenges of storage and distribution should not be
underestimated, a major bottleneck lies in the photovoltaic devices themselves.
Improving efficiency is part of the solution, but diminishing returns in that area
mean that reducing the manufacturing cost is absolutely vital, whilst still retaining good efficiencies and device lifetimes.

Solution-processible materials, e.g. organic molecules, conjugated polymers
and semiconductor nanoparticles, offer new routes to the low-cost production of
solar cells. The challenge here is that absorbing light in an organic material
produces a coulombically bound exciton that requires dissociation at a
donor–acceptor heterojunction. A thickness of at least 100 nm is required to
absorb the incident light, but excitons only diffuse a few nanometres before
decaying. The problem is therefore intrinsically at the nano-scale: we need
composite devices with a large area of internal donor–acceptor interface, but
where each carrier has a pathway to the respective electrode. Dye-sensitized and
bulk heterojunction cells have nanostructures which approach this challenge in
different ways, and leading research in this area is described in many of the
articles in this special issue.

This issue is not restricted to organic or dye-sensitized photovoltaics, since
nanotechnology can also play an important role in devices based on more conventional inorganic materials. In these materials, the electronic properties can be controlled, tuned and in some cases completely changed by nanoscale confinement. Also, the techniques of nanoscience are the natural ones for investigating the localized states, particularly at surfaces and interfaces, which are often the limiting factor in device performance.

This issue provides concrete examples of how the techniques of nanoscience and nanotechnology can be used to understand, control and optimize the performance of novel photovoltaic devices.

Nanostructure Fabrication Processes

2010-05-09T09:32:00.001-07:00

Progress in understanding and optimizing materials processing in wet chemical environments requires the use of in situ measurements of the structure and dynamics of the metal-electrolyte interface under realistic conditions. These measurements can provide insight into the mechanisms of relevant atomic, molecular, and mesoscale film growth and dissolution processes.

This project has several thrust areas ranging from measurements and modeling of surfactant mediated growth to the investigation of both surface and thin film growth stress. Particular attention has been given to the role of electrolyte additives in the formation and performance of advanced nanoscale and mesoscale interconnects as used in state of the art microelectronic devices. Measurements are also underway that detail the use of underpotential deposition (upd) reactions to precisely control the composition and structure of 2-D and 3-D alloys. This is complemented by measurements of stress changes that accompany alloy formation as well as the inverse dealloying process. An integral part of the program is the development of mechanistic linkage between atomic and molecular phenomena and rational design of the desired nanostructures.

Additional Technical Details:
This year we demonstrated the first example of void-free trench filling with ferromagnetic materials. Feature filling involves a new mechanism of superconformal growth that uses a single inhibitor whose consumption during deposition gives rise to positive feedback. Coupling of the non-linear dynamics with the non-planar substrate geometry gives rise to void-free nickel deposition in the recessed surface features as shown in the cross section TEM images given below. Two types of molecules have been shown to yield this effect; cationic Nbearing polymers and more recently certain benzimidazole derivatives. The latter provide feature filling dynamics that offer seamless integration with conventional Damascene processing and thereby the prospect of introducing ferromagnetic materials into 3-D metallization for ULSICMOS and MEMS applications.

Measurements developed for upd processes of alloy deposition have received significant attention in the past year. Practical interest in the production of Pt-transition metal alloys for use as either hard magnetic materials for memory applications and /or as potential fuel cell electrocatalyst has motivated much of this work. The Pt-Cu system has been examined as a model upd-codeposition system due to the absence of parasitic reactions. As shown below, co-deposition of Cu with Pt occurs at potentials well positive of that required to deposit pure Cu. The figure also demonstrates the use of in situ quartz crystal gravimetry for the determination of alloy composition along with a direct comparison to post deposition ex-situ methods.

The upd process has also been applied to Pt-Ni and Pt-Co alloys and preliminary studies indicate that these alloy films are more catalytic than pure Pt for the oxygen reduction reaction; the latter being a central impediment to improved fuel cell performance.

In order to gain a deeper insight into upd and molecular adsorption processes relevant to a wide range of electrochemical processing issues, a variety of in situ scanning tunneling microscope (STM), atomic force microscope (AFM), stress and gravimetric measurements are underway.

MSEL has recently constructed an optical bench for in situ measurement of surface stress during electrochemical processing using the wafer curvature method. Forces on the order of 0.008 N/m (23 km radius of curvature) can be resolved, sufficient to study the adsorption of upd and molecular monolayers. This powerful method is capable of monitoring the surface stress associated with reversible upd reactions such as Pb onto the (111)-textured Au surface as shown below.

The stress transient shows four regimes of behavior from ClO4- desorption, Pb-Au bond formation, stress relaxation due to hcp-Pb island coalescence, and electrocompression of the monolayer at potentials just positive of bulk Pb deposition. Interestingly, these measurements show that the complete Pb monolayer behaves as a free-standing elastic film where the stress - strain proportionality has a value equal to the biaxial modulus for Pb (111) in the bulk. Similar work has examined the upd of Bi on Au. Further work is underway exploring these timely and exciting issues.

Nanostructure

2010-04-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

A nanostructure is an object of intermediate size between molecular and microscopic (micrometer-sized) structures.

In describing nanostructures it is necessary to differentiate between the number of dimensions on the nanoscale. Nanotextured surfaces have one dimension on the nanoscale, i.e., only the thickness of the surface of an object is between 0.1 and 100 nm. Nanotubes have two dimensions on the nanoscale, i.e., the diameter of the tube is between 0.1 and 100 nm; its length could be much greater. Finally, spherical nanoparticles have three dimensions on the nanoscale, i.e., the particle is between 0.1 and 100 nm in each spatial dimension. The terms nanoparticles and ultrafine particles (UFP) often are used synonymously although UFP can reach into the micrometre range. The term 'nanostructure' is often used when referring to magnetic technology.

List of nanostructures

Nanocages
Nanocomposite
Nanofabrics
Nanofiber
Nanoflake
Nanoflower
Nanofoam
Nanomesh
Nanoparticle
Nanopillar
Nanopin film
Nanoring
Nanorod
Nanoshell
Quantum dot
Quantum heterostructure
Sculptured thin film

Nanotechnology and its Future Applications

2010-03-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology, the term coined by Eric Drexler in the1980s, refers to the engineering of tiny devices and machines. This is a technology involving the potential ability to fabricate structures and devices with atomic precision by controlling the size of the matter at the scale of 1-10nm. It will provide the solution to a large number of problems faced by mankind today. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter (10-9), roughly the width of three or four atoms.

The Potential of Nanotechnology

The potential of nanotechnology is huge and can lead to tremendous miniaturization in wider areas like space systems, medial diagnostic equipments and drug delivery systems. It will enable us to fabricate very sensitive devices and machines, leading to the enhancement of human capabilities to work efficiently, at lowers cost, with more precision and in environmentally friendly ways. Nanotechnology will make it feasible for us to create such sophisticated devices and structures with more flexibility at nanoscale.

Areas in which nanotechnology has future applications and discoveries, which can lead to enormous economical and industrial development, is as follows:

Macromolecular design and folding
Self-assembly methods
Catalysis (inorganic, enzyme and other)
Dendrimers, fullerenes and other novel chemical structures
Bioenergetics, nanobatteries and ultrasound-driven chemistry
Semiconductor-organic/biological interfaces
Miniaturization and massive parallelism of SFM
Molecular modeling tool

Applications:

Energy Storage, Production and Conversion:
a) Novel hydrogen storage systems based on carbon nanotubes and other
lightweight nanomaterials
b) Photovoltaic cells and organic light-emitting devices based on quantum dots
c) Carbon nanotubes in composite 0.lm coatings for solar cells
d) Nanocatalysts for hydrogen generation
e) Hybrid protein-polymer biomimetic membranes
Agricultural Productivity Enrichment:
a) Nanoporous zeolites for slow release and efficient dosage of water and
fertilizers for plants and of nutrients and drugs for livestock
b) Nanocapsules for herbicide delivery
c) Nanosensors for soil quality and for plant health monitoring
d) Nanomagnets for removal of soil contaminants
Water Treatment and Remediation:
a) Nanomembranes for water purification, desalination and detoxification
b) Nanosensors for the detection of contaminants and pathogens
c) Nanoporous zeolites, nanoporous polymers and attapulgite clays for water purification
d) Magnetic nanoparticles for water treatment and remediation
e) TiO 2 nanoparticles for the catalytic degradation of water pollutants
Disease Diagnosis and Screening:
a) Nanoliter systems (Lab-on-a-chip)
b) Nanosensor arrays based on carbon nanotubes
c) Quantum dots for disease diagnosis
d) Magnetic nanoparticles as nanosensors
e) Antibody-dendrimer conjugates for diagnosis of HIV-1 and cancer
f) Nanowire and nanobelt nanosensors for disease diagnosis
g) Nanoparticles as medical image enhancers
Drug Delivery Systems:
a)Nanocapsules, liposomes, dendrimers, buckyballs, nanobiomagnets
and attapulgite clays for slow and sustained drug release systems
Food Processing and Storage:
a) Nanocomposites for plastic .lm coatings used in food packaging
b) Antimicrobial nanoemulsions for applications used in decontamination of food equipment or packaging
c) Nanotechnology-based antigen detecting biosensors for identification of pathogen contamination
Air Pollution and Remediation:
a) TiO 2 nanoparticle-based photocatalytic degradation of air pollutants in
self-cleaning systems
b) Nanocatalysts for more efficient, cheaper and better-controlled
catalytic converters
c) Nanosensors for detection of toxic materials and leaks
d) Gas separation nanodevices
Construction - nanomolecular structures to make asphalt and concrete more robust to counter water seepage:
a) Heat-resistant nanomaterials to block ultraviolet and infrared radiation
b) Nanomaterials for cheaper and durable housing, surfaces, coatings, glues, concrete and heat and light exclusion
c) Self-cleaning surfaces (e.g. windows, mirrors, toilets) with bioactive coatings
Health monitoring Nanotubes and nanoparticles for glucose, CO(2), and cholesterol sensors and for in-site monitoring of homeostasis:
Vector and pest detection and control:
a) Nanosensors for pest detection.
b) Nanoparticles for new pesticides, insecticides and insect repellents

Nanotechnology and Cancer

2010-03-16T23:26:00.001-07:00

Majority of animal cells are approximately 10,000 to 20,000 nanometers in width. Consequently, it would be simpler for nano tools to go into and intermingle with the cell's proteins and DNA.

Nanotechnology can be utilized to combat cancer in 2 manners. Firstly, it will be utilized in spotting the existence of cancer much sooner and with superior accuracy as compared to the regular diagnostic techniques, like X-RAYS, MRIs, and biopsies. Secondly, it will be utilized in the obliteration of the cancer, with bigger exactitude and diligence, once it is diagnosed.

Nanotechnology Cancer Treatment

Nanotechnology's supreme guarantee in medical history is its probability to obliterate cancers that up till now have been defiant to conservative cures.

Contemporary radiation and chemotherapy can be best defined as 'carpet bombing' cancer. That implies that fit cells are assaulted together with the cancer cells. The consequence is that the cancer patient undergoes severe spin-offs, together with sickness, hair fall, anemia, and the dilapidation of his/her immunology. The deficiency of accuracy inbuilt in contemporary cancer combating methods at times, implies that not the entire of a cancer is eliminated, leading to a revival of the cancer.

Nanotechnology cancer therapy on the other hand, gives the probability of a cancer combating smart method. Nano tools can be developed that can accurately transport medicines to only the cancer cells, leaving fit cells undamaged. These tools would go into the formerly distinguished cancerous cells and carry the drug or amalgamation of drugs, annihilating the cancer from its roots.

One more prospective system blends nanotechnology with an innovative type of radiation therapy. Carbon nano tubes are set up into cancerous cells. After that an infrared laser is emphasized on the impacted region. The laser warms the nano tubes, leading to the damage of the cancerous cells, leaving fit cells unharmed.

An additional method anticipated for curing cancer would entail nano computers factually redrafting the DNA of cancerous cells to transform them back into standard cells. The concept would be that these tools would inspect the DNA of cancerous cells on the minuscule level, contrasting them to what the DNA of usual cells for the cancer patient ought to be, and then calling in nano fixing devices to repair the DNA.

Summary

This implies that within the life span of majority people, cancer- the big slayer of our time, may no more be laden with the terror we see it with now. The next generation might well see cancer as we see few epidemics from history, such as chicken pox, which are a fraction of history and no more as an element of our daily life.

Nanotechnology and it's Benefits

2010-03-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology - Nanomedicine

2010-03-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology involves the science and technology of devices and materials, such as drug delivery systems or electronic circuits, that are created on extremely tiny scales – as small as molecules and even atoms. Nanotechnology also involves manipulation of structure matter at molecular levels, involving different fields and specialties such as chemistry, engineering, electronics, medicine and others. All of these fields of study and pursuit are concerned with bringing existing technologies down to a very tiny scale that is measured in, 'nanometers,' which is a billionth of a meter, or about the size of six carbon atoms in a row.

The processes used both today and in the past in the creation of industrial products have involved pushing piles of millions of atoms together through mixing, grinding and heating, a process that is very imprecise. Scientists are now able to pick up individual atoms and assemble them into structures, or cause particular chemical reactions. For example, propellers have been attached to molecular motors and electricity has been conducted through, 'nanowires.' 'Nanotubes,' made of carbon are being investigated for use in a variety of both research and industrial purposes. As the future approaches, the use of nanotechnology might find scientists able to harness the forces that operate at the scale of the nanometer, such as the Van Der Waals force. They may be able to harness the changes in the quantum states of particles for engineering purposes.

One of the promising aspects of nanotechnology where improvement of the quality of human life is concerned includes the potential for new treatments for disease. Tiny autonomous robots or, 'nanobots,' might one day be sent into a person's body to cure cancer or repair cells, or possibly even extend the person's life span by a number of years. At this time the simple devices that have been created by nanotechnology are not of the complexity envisioned with nanomachines and nanobots.

Nanotechnology Background

Nanotechnology has emerged from the chemical, physical, biological and engineering sciences. Novel techniques are being developed by scientists in these fields to both probe and manipulate individual atoms and molecules. The tools these scientists have developed have enabled a variety of new discoveries regarding the ways in which properties of matter are governed by the atomic and molecular arrangements at nanometer dimensions. The discoveries that have been made have had an impact on the processing of a wide-range of devices and materials. The results have been substantial improvements in existing technologies, as well as entirely new ones. Control of the design properties, materials, as well as devices at the nanoscale is possible through exploitation of strategies which are often complemented by top-down engineering approaches.

Nanotechnology-based approaches are poised to revolutionize research biology and medicine. In another example, with the significant progress in understanding the genetic basis of biochemical pathways that are involved in both injury and disease processes, there is a great need for highly-sensitive, real-time monitoring and detection technologies. Nanotechnology may be used to design diagnostic systems that are multi-functional and multi-analytic; ones that not only define early stage changes or progression of disease states, but also identify unique biological molecules, structures and chemicals. There are nanotechnologies related to imaging for metastasis, inflammation, and angiogenesis that are emerging. Nanotechnology and nanoscience are presenting new opportunities for the treatment and management of traumatic injuries and diseases. Multifunctional materials on nanoscales that capitalize on progress in proteomics and genomics are allowing targeted delivery of molecular therapies with enhanced efficacy.

Studies that use nanotechnology concepts and techniques and focus on biological processes have the potential to provide new insight into the physical relationships between cellular components and functional irregularities that trigger pathological abnormalities. Nanoscience and the technologies emerging from it offer a means of controlling the design and assembly of biomolecular processes that are very relevant to health and disease. In another example, while the processes involved in energy conversion offer a means of constructing a biomolecular machine through enzymology and structural biology have been studied for a number of years, nanotechnology and nanoscience present a means of creating a biomolecular machine that uses biological energy sources in new ways.

NanoTechnology, Nanomedicine, and the Future

Nanotechnologies, applied to the medical field, could allow doctors to search out and destroy the very first cancer cells that would otherwise have caused a tumor to develop. Nanotechnologies could remove a broken portion of a cell and replace it with a miniature biological machine, or deliver medicines exactly where and when they are needed. Nanomedicine is an offshoot of nanotechnology, and refers to highly-specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing diseases or repairing damaged tissues. The pursuit of nanomedicine on the part of researchers at the National Institute of Health (NIH) began several years ago, with results expected within ten years of their launch date in 2005.

Research into nanotechnology started with discoveries of unique chemical and physical properties of various carbon-based or metallic materials which only appear for structures at nanometer-sized dimensions. The ability to understand the scale of these properties allows engineers to build new structures and use the materials in new ways. The same thing is true for biological structures inside living cells within the human body. Researchers have been able to develop powerful tools to categorize the parts of cells in great detail; they are aware of a great amount of detail concerning how intracellular structures operate.

Still, scientists have not been able to answer certain questions. The questions that remain involve things such as, 'How many, ' 'how big,' and, 'how fast?' They must find the answers to these kinds of questions in order to fully understand cellular structures and gain the ability to repair them, or build new nanotechnology structures that can safely operate inside the human body. Once scientists have achieved this, they will be able to work with others to build better diagnostic tools and engineer nanoscale structures for specific treatments of diseases or tissues that have been damaged.

The NIH established a national network of eight Nanomedicine Development Centers to serve as the intellectual and technological centerpiece of the NIH Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative. The centers are staffed by research teams that include physicians, biologists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. The initial phase of the program found the centers pursuing research aimed at gathering extensive information about the chemical and physical properties of nanoscale biological structures. Because of the catalogue the NIH has been able to create, they are gaining a greater understanding of nature's rules of biological design that will enable their researchers to correct defects in unhealthy cells. The research requires the development of new devices for a broad range of biomedical applications, such as detecting infectious agents or metabolic imbalances, with new and tiny sensors, replacing items inside of cells with new nanoscale structures, or generating miniature devices that have the capability to search for and destroy infectious agents.

The NIH is approaching phase two of the program, which has been approved. During phase two of the Nanomedicine initiative, the fundamental knowledge and developed tools they have acquired will be applied to both understanding and treatment of disease. The centers will continue their pursuit of knowledge, expanding it in regards to the science of nanostructures in living cells. They will gain the capability to engineer biological nanostructures, apply their knowledge, tools, and devices – and focus on targeting specific diseases.