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Nanotech Shaping up the Future

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PCQ Bureau
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In 1959, physicist and future Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman gave a

lecture to the American Physical Society called "There's Plenty of Room at the

Bottom." The focus of his speech was about the field of miniaturization and how

he believed man would create increasingly smaller, powerful devices. We now know

what he meant.

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Nanotechnology has been the buzzword for quite some while now. But to

understand this unusual world of Nanotechnology, it would be better to

understand the nanometer first. A centimeter is one-hundredth of a meter, a

millimeter is one-thousandth of a meter, and a micrometer is one-millionth of a

meter, but all of these are still huge compared to the nanoscale. In fact they

are massive. A nanometer (nm) is one-billionth of a meter, that is smaller than

the wavelength of visible light and a hundred-thousandth the width of a human

hair. Also known as 'Nanotech', this new age physics deals with the study of

matter at an atomic or molecular scale and is expected to drive most of the

future manufacturing technologies. In simpler words, Nanotechnology is helping

us build machines at a subatomic level. Advantages being, it can and will make

most products lighter, stronger, cleaner, less expensive and more precise.

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As of August 2008, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies estimates that

over 800 manufacturer-identified nanotech products are publicly available, with

new ones hitting the market at a pace of 3-4 per week. Even as of now, most of

these applications are limited to the use of "first generation" passive

nanomaterials which includes titanium dioxide in sunscreen, cosmetics and some

food products; Carbon allotropes used to produce gecko tape; silver in food

packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances; zinc oxide in

sunscreens and cosmetics, surface coatings, paints and outdoor furniture

varnishes; and cerium oxide as a fuel catalyst. Let's have a look at some of

these amazing technologies which are shaping the future.

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Nanowires and Nanotubes



Currently, scientists are finding two nano-size structures of great

interest: nanowires and carbon nanotubes. Nanowires are wires with an extremely

small diameter, sometimes as small as 1 nanometer. Scientists hope to use them

to build tiny transistors for computer chips and other electronic devices. In

the last couple of years, carbon nanotubes have overshadowed nanowires. A carbon

nanotube is a nano-size cylinder of carbon atoms. Imagine a sheet of carbon

atoms, which would look like a sheet of hexagons. When you roll this sheet into

a tube, what you'd have is a carbon nanotube. Properties of carbon nanotubes

depend on how you roll the sheet.

In other words, even though all carbon nanotubes are made of carbon, they can

be very different from one another based on how you align the individual atoms.

With the right arrangement of these atoms, one can create a carbon nanotube

that's hundreds of times stronger than steel, but at the same time is six times

lighter. Now that sounds like a dream come true for engineers looking for

materials for building cars and planes doesn't it. Carbon nanotubes are also

likely to be used in IT. These tubes can be either conducting or semiconducting

and have the potential for memory and storage as well.

These four diagrams explain how tiny is a nanometer.
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Other options for data storage include the use of SPMs (scanning probe

microscopes) as a tool for information transfer. This is exemplified by the IBM

'millipede' system, which employs an array of AFMs (atomic force microscopes)

tips to make indentations in a polymer and then read them, much in the same way

as a laser reads a CD but at a considerably smaller size scale and with a much

higher density of information.

An interesting way in which carbon nanotubes are being used is in the

development of a high density, nonvolatile random access memory chip that could

replace dynamic RAM, flash memory and even hard drives. Nantero, a

nanotechnology company, has built using nanotubes a chip called NRAM (for

nanotube-based/nonvolatile RAM) that is faster than DRAM, as portable as flash

memory, and able to provide permanent storage because the wafer uses nonvolatile

storage as its basis.

The technology has the potential to enable instant-on computers that boot and

reboot without delays and eliminate the need for internal disk drives on

computers.

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Nanotechnology also has something in store for display devices, such as the

replacement of cathode ray tube (CRT) technology by electron-producing carbon

nanotubes. The timing of when these applications are offered in finished

products is uncertain, but nanotechnology is already contributing to increased

data storage capacity and processing speeds.

Smart materials and nanosensors



Smart materials is one of the proposed applications of molecular

nanotechnology. The term refers to any sort of material designed and engineered

at the nanometer scale to perform a specific task, and encompasses a wide

variety of possible commercial applications. One example of such materials would

be materials designed to respond differently to various molecules; such a

capability could lead, for example, to artificial drugs which would recognize

and render inert specific viruses. In the same way as self-sealing tires or

human skin, another is the idea of self-healing structures, which would repair

small tears in a surface naturally Similarly, A nanosensor would resemble a

smart material, involving a small component within a larger machine that would

react to its environment and change in some fundamental, intentional way.

As a very simple example: a photosensor could passively measure the incident

light and discharge its absorbed energy as electricity when the light passes

above or below a specified threshold, sending a signal to a larger machine. Such

a sensor would cost less and use less power than a conventional sensor, and yet

function usefully in all the same applications - for example, turning on parking

lot lights when it gets dark.

Environment friendly Energy systems



Fuel cells being powered by hydrogen are a great example of an

environmentally friendly form of energy. The catalyst consisting of carbon

supported noble metal particles with diameters of 1-5 nm is the most prominent

nanostructured material in fuel cells. Suitable materials for hydrogen storage

contain a large number of small nanosized pores. Therefore many nanostructured

materials like nanotubes, zeolites or alanates are under investigation. Advances

in these can help changing the way energy is being produced in the world to run

automobiles and factories.

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