Nanotechnology

From the beginning of time, atoms are arranged in various formations to give rise to different things. When carbon is pieced together in one way, it becomes coal. But when the carbon is put together in another formation, it becomes diamond. Similarly, sand and computer chips are essentially made up of the same atoms but arranged in a different manner. Extend that thought further, it is not difficult to understand that if we are able to manipulate atoms and molecules and put them where we want them to be, we could essentially build anything. This is why governments, businesses and research scientists worldwide are spending so much time and money in research and development in nanotechnology.

A meter is defined as the distance light travelled in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. In our daily lives we see a meter as 100 centimeters or 1000 millimeters. If we divide a millimeter by a thousand times, we have a micrometer. Divide a micrometer further by a thousand times, we would have a nanometer. Thus, scientifically, a nanometer is 1/1,000,000,000 of a meter. To give a comparison of size, a nanometer would be the size of about 10 hydrogen atoms or 5 silicon atoms arranged in a line.

Nanotechnology is about working at the level that deals with the smallest parts of matter that we can manipulate. To many scientist, nanotechnology is nothing new as they have been working with electron microscopes for tens of years. That is effectively dealing with matters at the molecular and atomic level.

However, there is another group that sees nanotechnology as the next industrial revolution. They are talking about miniature machines in the bloodstream that can remove blood clots and repair damaged blood vessels, nano-sized robots that can build what we programmed them to build, etc.

It is a common belief that nanotechnology would yield applications that could benefit mankind at least 20 years later. But this is just a common belief. The fact is that, there are already more than 10 Nobel prizes awarded in the nanotechnology field in the last 15 years. An example would be the development of the Scanning Probe Microscope. Another would be the discovery of fullerenes (another form of Carbon besides graphite and diamond).

Companies have already applied nanotechnology to many products that we are using, like car parts, clothes, ski wax, etc. We may not have known about all these, but nanotechnology is here. Many universities already have a nanotechnology department and many more will have one in the near future. Beyond that, there are more than 600 companies worldwide that are active in nanotechnology. These companies range from small start-ups to giant corporations like Samsung. These suggest that nanotechnology is not only affecting us today in some ways, it is going to change our lives in the near future.

Another common belief is that nanotechnology is about making things smaller. This could be due to the knowledge of micro-technologies that has been focused on taking macro-sized devices, like transistors, and making them smaller. Though nanotechnology can also be about reducing the size of devices, it is more concern about creation from bottom up. It is about having alternative approaches to product smaller, cheaper and more intelligent devices.

Nanotechnology is really nothing new. The Romans and Chinese have been using nanoparticles thousands of years ago. But, they do not know they are using nanotechnology as they have no control over particle size and have no knowledge of nanoscale. Our ability to see and manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular level and understand the interactions on the atomic scale is the new area of nanotechnology that we are all pursuing.