Hello my name is Hossam Haick and I will

serve
as the lecturer of the MOOC course on
nanotechnology and nanosensors.
I wish you a successful course on the
great
journey into the amazing world of
nanotechnology and nanosensors.
Today I will make an introduction to the
field of nantechnology.
I will start with defining the main
phrases that include the word nano.
Then I will present the main and unique
features of
the materials and technologies that exist
at the nanoscale level.
I will end this topic by making a generic
presentation of
the main categories of the materials that
exist at the nanoscale level.
The prefix nano is derived from the
ancient Greek nanos, which means
dwarf.
Today, nano is used as a
prefix that means, billionth or a factor
of 10 to the minus
9.
Coupling the word nano with the unit meter
brings the term nanometer, which actually
indicates a unit of spatial measurement
that is one billionth of a meter.
With this in mind, we shall
define nanotechnology as the science,
engineering,
and technology conducted at the scale that
ranges between one to 100 nanometers.
The idea and the concept behind the
nanotechnology started with a
talk entitled, There is Plenty of Room at
the Bottom, by the
physicist Richard Feynman, at the American
Physical Society meeting, at the
California
Institute of Technology, CalTech, in a
meeting that was held in 1959.
In his talk, Feynman described a process
in which scientists
would be able to manipulate and control
individual atoms as well as individual
molecules.
Over a decade later, Professor Norio
Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology
during
his explorations and research in the field
of ultra precise machining process.
However, practicing the modern
nanotechnology began
only in 1981, when the scanning
tunneling microscope, which basically
could see individual atoms

or could see individual molecules, was

developed and used.
To demonstrate the length of scale of the
nanometer, I will
present first the units or measures used
in our daily life.
If we cut a meter into 100 equal pieces,
then each piece would be one centimeter in
size.
This is equivalent to the size of your
pinky finger or a sugar cube.
If we cut a centimeter into 100 equal
pieces, each piece will be one millimeter.
A cent coin is approximately one
millimeter thick, and a grain
of sand ranges from 0.1 millimeter to 2
millimeter in size.
Objects as small as millimeter can be seen
with our own eyes.
However, when things get smaller than a
millimeter, it gets
harder and harder to see them with just
our eyes.
If we cut up a millimeter into 100 equal
pieces, each piece will be a micrometer.
In other words, a micrometer is equal to
one millionth of the meter.
For example, the diameter of hair is about
40 to 50 micrometers wide, red
blood cells are six to ten micrometers in
diameter and many types of bacteria
typically measure five to 20 micrometers
in diameter or in size.
Things on this scale usually cannot be
seen with our own eyes,
but rather, can be seen with a magnifying
glass or with a microscope.
If we cut a micrometer, now, into 1,000
equal pieces, then each piece will be one
nanometer.
In other words, a nanometer is equal to
one billionth of a meter.
When things are as small as the nanometer
you cannot see them with
your own eyes, or even you cannot see them
with a light microscope.
Objects this small require special tools
of imaging.
Things that have a nanometer scale include
viruses which
have a characteristic size of 30 to 50
nanometer.
DNA, which have a diameter of one to two
nanometer.
Buckyballs with have a characteristic size
or diameter of one nanometer.
And also carbon nanotubes which have a
characteristic diameter of one nanometer.
In this context I would like to
clarify that atoms are smaller than a

nanometer.
Actually, one atom measures 0.1 to 0.3
nanometer, and
this, of course, depends on the element
that is examined.
Now I will give you some examples for
objects
from our daily life that are measured in
nanometer.
One inch is equal to 25.4 million
nanometers,
and a sheet of paper is about 100,000
nanometers think.
A human hair measures roughly 50,000 to
100,000 nanometers in diameter, and please
note that your fingernails grows one
nanometer every second.
It
is acceptable that a picture is worth
1,000 of
words, and that a video is worth thousand
of pictures.
Therefore, our, I will add with the
presented
short video to further demonstrate the
meaning of nano.
Of course, I will give the girl in the
video the privilege to talk on her behalf.
[MUSIC]
>> Hey.
Do you know what nano means?
It means small, very small.
It is a million times smaller than the
smallest measure on a ruler.
If you want to get an idea for how small a
nanometer
really is, you'll need to take a piece of
hair from your head.
Go on, it won't hurt.
Got it.
Now, take a good, close look at that
strand of hair.
Not much to look at, is it?
If we were to shrink you down, smaller
than the smallest thing you can see with
the
naked eye, you will find that your piece
of hair starts to look a lot more
interesting.
You are now about the size of a red blood
cell.
Your strand of hair is a massive tree
compared to you.
Even at this size, you're still about 1000
times too big to be considered nano.
To get you down to the nano scale, we
will have to shrink you to about 100
nanometers tall.
Hey, where are all the lights?
You are now smaller

than the wavelength of visible light.

You are practically invisible.
But for the sake of demonstration, I think
we should turn on some lights.
At this size, the red blood cell is 1,000
times bigger than you are.
It is like an enormous stadium.
Welcome to the nanoscale.
You could probably hold the common cold
virus in your hands quite comfortably now.
The rhinovirus is only about 30 nanometers
across, and is nearly impossible to see
next to the red blood cell.
A red blood cell is too big to be
considered nano.
However, it's made up of all kinds of
nanomaterials.
If you were to look close enough, you
would see that the
outer walls of the cell are stabilized by
a flexible mesh-like protein skeleton.
The bars and connectors that make up
this mesh are considered part of a
nanomaterial.
Without these reinforcing nanostructures,
the cell would be
much more fragile, and not nearly as
flexible.
It wouldn't stand a chance in your body.
Everything is made up of nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials are an arrangement of
molecules
and atoms that, when combined create
stable
building blocks that can be made
into larger, more complex materials and
structures.
>> After this demonstration I will give
right now an
example for the importance of
miniaturization ability of the
nanotechnology.
A such example, let's have a look on how
cell
phones developed from the bulky walkie
talkie to today's miniaturized
architecture.
In 1985 mobile phones used to look huge in
size and with a pretty long antenna.
On the other hand in present we have the
smartphones which are becoming a
computer, GPS, radio, and actually our
lifeline to the Internet.
And to still be able to fit our pockets.
With the help of nanotechnology, mobile
phones will
be further evolved in terms of their
performance, and features.
And would include for example, augmented
reality, flexible screens,

in built projector, seamless voice

control, three-dimensional screens
and holograms, and of course it might
include also remote medical diagnosis
features and many, many more features.
Nanotechnology in one sense is the natural
continuation of
the evolution that we have witnessed over
the last decade.
Where millionth of a meter electronics,
which
we call usually micro electronics, became
commonplace.
Thus enabling the construction of higher
quality of materials and devices and
many more applications on equivalent or
even smaller areas than we
have knew previously.
So far, the miniaturization ability of the
microelectronics allow the
integration or placement of thousands of
chips into an equivalent area.
Further miniaturization with the help of
nanotechnology
would allow putting millions of currently
available
electronic devices over an area that is
less that few millimeters over few
millimeters.
In a constituent example, a team from the
Technion Israel Institute of Technology
leveraged the power of nanotechnology to
engrave
all the content of the Old Testament
on a piece of silicon that is less than
one millimeter by one millimeter,
as could be seen by the image in the
bottom right of the screen.
One of the parameters that is directly
connected with the
miniaturization and nano technology is
termed surface to volume ratio.
This parameter is of fundamental
importance in the
applications involving chemical catalysis
and nucleation of physical processes.
Usually, surface area to volume ratio
increases with a
decrease in characteristic dimensions of
the material, and vice versa.
Therefore as the material size decreases,
a greater portion of the atoms are found
on the surface compared to those found in
the bulk or inside the same material.
As growth and catalytic chemical reaction
occurs at
the surfaces, therefore a given mass of
nanomaterial will be much more
reactive than the same mass of material
made up of larger particles.

It is also found that materials which are

inert in their bulk
from form a reactive when
produced in their nanoscale form.
And therefore they can improve
their properties.
To demonstrate the relationship between
the miniaturization
of the materials and the surface to volume
ratio, let's consider a cube made of a
silicon with a characteristic size of ten
nanometers.
In this case, the number of the unit cells
in this nanocube is estimated by 6,250,
which is actually equivalent to to fif, to
50,000 atoms.
On the other hand, the number of the unit
cells that are located on
each face is 340, thus resulting in 680
atoms on each face of
the nanocube, and 4,080 atoms on all faces
of the nanocube.
Dividing the number of the atoms available
on the surface of the
nanocube, namely 4080 atoms, by the number
of the atoms available in all parts
of the nanocube, which is basically 50,000
atoms, brings to the conclusion that
around 10% of the atoms in the nanocube
are located on the surface.
On the other hand if we applied a similar
consideration with a piece of silicon of
ten square centimeters and the thickness
of one micrometer.
This leads to the conclusion that only
0.03% of the
silicon atoms in this structure are
available on the surface.
Therefore, nanomaterials have a much
greater surface
area per unit volume compared with the
larger particles.
Actually this leads to nanoparticles that
are more chemically reactive.
This is so because the molecules at the
surface of the material don't have full
allocation of covalent bonds and are in
energetically unstable states.
Since many more molecules are located on
the surface are in energetically unstable
states, nanomaterials are more reactive
compared to
the microscale or to the macroscale
materials.
With the higher reactivity almost all
types of nanomaterials are capable
of catalyzing reactions and free
nanomaterials
tend to agglomerate into bigger particles.
On to the specific physical and chemical

properties of
the nanoparticles there are expect,
expected to interact with
substances such as proteins, lipids,
carbohydrates, and nucleic acids
that present in food, biological, or
during desalination processes.
Other applications of such feature include
drug
delivery, clothing insulation, and many,
many more.
With this, we come now to the end of class
number one, session number one.
Thank you.