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Nanotechnology - What Is The Reason For The Uproar?

The terms "nanometer" and "technology" are what were originally combined to form the phrase "nanotechnology." This word is used to indicate a broad variety of recent technological breakthroughs in many different scientific and technical fields, including but not limited to electronics, mechanics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and physics.

Author:James Pierce
Reviewer:Elisa Mueller
Aug 02, 20232.5K Shares134.6K Views
The terms "nanometer" and "technology" are what were originally combined to form the phrase "nanotechnology."
This word is used to indicate a broad variety of recent technological breakthroughs in many different scientific and technical fields, including but not limited to electronics, mechanics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and physics.
If you were to ask a random sample of people, including scientists, engineers, investors, and members of the general public, what nanotechnology is, you would obtain a spectrum of responses that was just as diverse as nanotechnology itself.
Because, as a matter of fact, we have been operating at the nanoscale for decades, whether it via electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopies, or simply by producing and studying thin films, there is nothing that should come as a shocking surprise to many scientists.
However, for the vast majority of other groups, the term "nanotechnology" refers to something much more audacious, such as the creation of miniature submarines that can travel through the bloodstream, tiny cogs and gears made out of atoms, space elevators made out of nanotubes, and the colonization of space.
It should come as no surprise that people often confuse nanotechnology with science fiction.
Nanotechnology is generally centered on and consists of human-made nanoparticles that originate from things or processes developed by humans.
Natural nanomaterials are present in our environment, while nanotechnology focuses on and is composed of human-made nanomaterials.

What Is The Nanoscale?

Even though the International Organization for Standardization defines a meter as "the length of the route traveled by light in vacuum at a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second" and a nanometer as "0.000 000 001 of a meter," this does not help scientists communicate the nanoscale to people who are not scientists.
Because it is natural for humans to assign relative sizes to the things they see on a daily basis, the word "nanotechnology" is most often explained in terms of the distance between two human hairs.

Understanding the nanoscale

Unfortunately, the diameter of human hairs varies widely, ranging from tens to hundreds of micrometers (0.000 001 of a meter), depending on the color, type, and region of the body from where they are acquired; as a result, we need a benchmark to which we can link the nanoscale.
Linking nanotechnology to atoms typically makes the nanometre easier to comprehend.
This is because rather than asking anyone to visualize a millionth or a billionth of something, which is something that very few logical people are able to do easily, linking nanotechnology to atoms allows for a more accurate representation.
A nanometer may be defined as the distance between 10 hydrogen atoms or 5 silicon atoms lined up, which is something that the average person's mind is capable of comprehending.
However, the size of an atom is something that only a small number of people who are not scientists can comprehend.
It is less important to focus on the specific size of the atoms than it is to highlight the fact that nanotechnology deals with the tiniest pieces of matter that we are able to change.
Nanotechnology is not a science from the far future that will only have applications in 25 years.
From the single-particle-mechanism to the fullerene, nanotechnology has been recognized with more than a dozen Nobel Prizes in the last fifteen years.
According to CMP Cientifica, there are around 600 firms that are working in nanotechnology.
These organizations range from start-ups to established businesses such as IBM and Samsung.
In the last year, governments and companies spent a combined total of $4 billion on nanotechnology.
Nearly every institution either has a department dedicated to nanotechnology or has submitted a funding proposal for one.
There are currently applications of nanotechnology in the marketplace, including automobile components, clothes, and ski wax.
Nanotechnology may be found just about wherever if you look.
The terms computer, software, and other forms of communication, such as the internet and mobile phones, have come to be associated with technology.
The first uses of nanotechnology include additives for plastic, nanocarbon particles for improved steels, coatings, and petrochemical catalysts.
These are all technology-based businesses competing in marketplaces worth many billions of dollars.

The Nanotechnology Industry

Will there be a sector of the economy dedicated to nanotechnology, similar to the software or mobile phone industries?
Many of the businesses that work with nanotechnology adapt what we know about the nanoscale to existing fields, such as the pharmaceutical and plastics sectors.
Nanotechnology is not an industry; rather, it is an enabler.
Despite the fact that software would not be possible without the power industry, neither Microsoft nor Oracle are considered to be a part of it.
Understanding nature on an atomic scale is what nanotechnology does.
This new knowledge will pave the way for the development of new fields, much as the discovery of how electrons can travel via a conductor paved the way for the development of electric lights, the telephone, computers, the internet, and a wide variety of other fields.
One gram of nanotubes, for instance, does not have any value of its own.
The value of nanotubes is mostly derived from their applications, which may be found either within already established industries or in the development of whole new ones.

What is Nanotechnology?

Why Is Nanotechnology Important?

Materials with unusual physical, chemical, and biological characteristics may arise at the nanoscale.
These characteristics may vary significantly from those of bulk materials and single atoms or molecules.
With nano components, the bulk characteristics of materials often alter substantially.
Composites built from nano-sized ceramic or metal particles smaller than 100 nanometers may unexpectedly become significantly stronger than anticipated by current materials-science models.
Metals with a grain size of roughly 10 nanometers, for example, are up to seven times harder and tougher than their typical counterparts with grain sizes in the hundreds of nanometers.
The bizarre realm of quantum physics is to blame for these abrupt alterations.
The bulk characteristics of any substance are just the sum of all quantum forces acting on all atoms.
As you become smaller and smaller, you reach a point where averaging no longer works.
The characteristics of materials might vary at the nanoscale for two basic reasons:

The Surface Area

To begin, as compared to the same quantity of material generated in a bigger form, nanomaterials have a surface area that is much more than that of the larger form.
This may influence the materials' strength or electrical characteristics, as well as make them more chemically reactive (in certain situations, materials that are inert in their larger form might become reactive when synthesized in their nanoscale form).

The Quantum Size Effects

Second, the behavior of matter at the nanoscale may begin to be dominated by quantum effects, especially at the lower end of the scale.
This can have an influence on the optical, electrical, and magnetic properties of materials.
This phenomenon explains the science behind the behaviors that electrons have in materials when there is a significant decrease in particle size.
Moving from a macro to a micro perspective removes the possibility of this impact occurring.
On the other hand, once the nanoscale size range is reached, it starts to take the lead.

The Unbelievable Expedition

The notion of shrinking gadgets such that they may be transplanted into the human body to detect and repair sick cells is a fashionable one that is becoming a reality.
Many companies are experimenting with nanotechnology-based drug delivery methods, but none are using mini-submarines.
Without the use of nanomachines, nanotechnology may enhance pharmaceutical delivery.
The concept of moving one's body freely is ludicrous.
Consider attempting to travel against the flow of blood in an artery as red and white blood cells the size of houses rain down on you.
Current medical applications of nanotechnology are likely to include improved delivery methods, such as pulmonary or epidermal methods to avoid the stomach, encapsulation for both delivery and delayed release, and eventually the integration of detection with delivery, so drugs can be delivered precisely where they're needed while minimizing side effects on healthy tissue and cells.
In terms of navigation, the medication will be administered by moving with the current and "dropping anchor" when it arrives at its target.

The Shrinking Matters

Another fallacy is that nanotechnology causes objects to shrink.
This has been exacerbated by images of little bulls and microscopic guitars that can be strummed with an AFM, which, although interesting, just show our new sub-micron control of matter.
Nanotechnology is concerned with building from the ground up, while micro-technologies are concerned with shrinking macro-scale devices such as transistors and mechanical systems.
Making things smaller won't help with the end of the CMOS roadmap approaching 10 nm and Von Neuman electronics' uncertainty principle limit at 2 nm.
Replacing CMOS transistors with nano devices will raise manufacturing costs while providing just a marginal benefit over current technology.
Nanotechnology may assist us by building technologies from the ground up.
Self-assembly methods, perhaps facilitated by nano imprint lithography templates, a significant European accomplishment, and our knowledge of polymers and chemicals at the nanoscale, such as Rotoxane, bring up new possibilities.
Our knowledge of material behavior at the molecular level enables a variety of different strategies for developing smarter, less expensive devices.
The new knowledge will also aid in the development of new designs, making functionality a more accurate performance metric than transistor density or ops/s.

Nanotechnology 2.0

Is Nanotechnology A New Thing?

Nanoscience and nanotechnologies are not new in certain ways.
Polymers, which are huge molecules made up of nanoscale subunits, have been created by chemists for many decades, and nanotechnologies have been employed to manufacture the microscopic features on computer chips over the last 30 years.
However, advancements in equipment that now allow individual atoms and molecules to be inspected and probed with extreme accuracy have permitted the growth and development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies.
New instruments brought new basic notions, and it was discovered that the mechanical principles that govern the nanoworld varied greatly from our ordinary, macroworld experience.
The constant search for miniaturization, in particular, has resulted in equipment such as the atomic force microscope (AFM) or the scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
These devices, when combined with improved procedures like electron beam lithography, enable the purposeful manipulation and fabrication of nanostructures. Something that was previously unthinkable.
There are many techniques available today for characterizing the nanomechanics of biomolecular and cellular interactions.
Examples include optical tweezers and magnetic pullers, in addition to cantilever-based devices like the AFM.

Building Atom By Atom

Don Eigler's use of an SPM to spell IBM in xenon atoms in 1989 was a watershed moment in the history of nanotechnology.
First, we were able to place atoms anywhere we wanted, albeit keeping them above absolute zero proved problematic.
Understanding the nanoworld by arranging atoms one by one is beneficial, but not for industry.
Given that a Pentium 4 processor contains 42 million transistors, reducing them to a cube of 100 atoms on each side would need 42 x 102 processes, without including additional materials and devices.
For nearly a century, physical chemistry has been utilized to create anything from nitrates to salt.
We don't need a Star Trek-style tabletop assembler to achieve this; just a few barrels of precursor chemicals and a catalyst.
Imagine manufacturing a sausage atom by atom. A sausage is known to include meat, fat, cartilage, different tissues, and bone, all wrapped with animal intestine.
Assembler supporters argue that smaller scales are easier to work with.
Cells, cytoplasm, mitochondria, chromosomes, ribosomes, and other complicated natural engineering may be found at the microscale.
Moving closer to the nanoscale, we must contend with nucleic acids, nucleotides, peptides, and proteins, none of which we completely comprehend or hope to comprehend very soon.
A farmyard with a few pigs is a more efficient sausage machine than anything we could possibly build.
It also makes hams and serves as an efficient trash disposal system. This demonstrates how far people have strayed from copying nature.

Attack Of The Killer Nanobots

Self-replicating robots that depart the lab and attack everything in their path are typically well-liked.
Nature outlasted mankind by hundreds of millions of years.
Naturally occurring nanomachines may multiply and evolve to avoid extinction, abandon their hosts, and fly effortlessly through the sky.
Because the majority of a virus's machinery is nanoscale, it's no surprise that they're so effective.
The ability of such 'nanobots' to convert a wide enough spectrum of materials for future growth limits their dissemination.
While many species' immune systems are unable to completely eliminate viruses without causing side effects such as runny noses, they are effective in dealing with this type of threat due to the vast array of technologies available to a large complex organism when confronted with a single purpose nano-sized one.
Any nano threat would need greater intelligence and adaptability than we are capable of developing.
Our knowledge of genomes and proteomics is still rudimentary in comparison to nature, and it is likely to remain so.
Anyone concerned about nanoscale hazards to humanity should think of HIV variations that may be spread by mosquitoes or deadlier flu viruses, which demand much more worry.

People Also Ask

When Was Nanotechnology Invented?

In 1959, American scientist and Nobel winner Richard Feynman proposed the notion of nanotechnology.
Feynman delivered a talk titled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" at the California Institute of Technology at the annual conference of the American Physical Society (Caltech).

Who First Used Nanotechnology?

The word "nanotechnology" was coined by the late Professor Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo Science University in a presentation titled "On the Basic Concept of 'Nanotechnology'" and delivered at a conference of the Japan Society of Precision Engineering in 1974.

How Will Nanotechnology Change Our World?

In the future, nanotechnology might help us improve the efficiency of electrical lines, solar cells, and biofuels, as well as making nuclear reactors safer.
Nanotechnology has the potential to make significant advancements in health care by enhancing ways for identifying and treating illnesses such as cancer.

Why Is Nanotechnology The Future?

Nanotechnology has the potential to transform dental medicine, healthcare, and human existence more fundamentally than previous breakthroughs.
However, they have the potential to provide significant benefits such as enhanced health, increased utilization of natural resources, and decreased environmental pollution.

Conclusions

Truly breakthrough nanotechnology goods, materials, and applications, such as nanorobotics, are still years away (some say only a few years; some say many years).
Today, what counts as "nanotechnology" is fundamental research and development taking place in labs all around the globe.
Today's "nanotech" products are mostly incrementally improved products (using evolutionary nanotechnology) that use some form of nano-enabled material (such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, nanocomposite structures, or nanoparticles of a specific substance) or nanotech process (e.g. nanopatterning or quantum dots for medical imaging) in the manufacturing process.
Nanotechnology and nanomaterials can raise a slew of environmental, health, and safety concerns.
What happens, for example, if nanomaterials infiltrate the body or the environment?
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James Pierce

James Pierce

Author
Elisa Mueller

Elisa Mueller

Reviewer
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