What is Nanotechnology?

Human dreams and imagination has often given rise to new discoveries in both
science and technology. Nanotechnology, a 21st-century frontier, was born out of
such dreams. But let’s put it more simply and less abstract.

Pick up something that is close to you. Let’s say your coffee mug, or your laptop or
maybe even a jacket that you really like. Now let’s think about their use in your
life: the mug for drinking coffee, the laptop for writing e-mails or watching videos
and the jacket for keeping you warm and maybe making you look cool. This are
very useful objects in our daily routines and they fulfil their purpose to the
maximum. Or do they?

Let’s now think about what this objects don’t do so well: the mug brakes if you
drop it, the laptop remains out of power just when you forgot to save that
presentation and the jacket gets dirty just after a week of heavy rain and bad
weather. You might not be aware of this but all of these things around us, with
their good and bad aspects actually depend on the individual atoms that make the
world around us and more importantly the way they are put together.

So basically, everything started with the atom. What is an atom? Atoms are basic
units of matter and the defining structure of elements. The term "atom" comes
from the Greek word for indivisible, because it was once thought that atoms were
the smallest things in the universe and could not be divided. That was around 450
B.C Unfortunately when the atomic bomb exploded some many years ago we came
to the realisation that atoms can indeed be split. But before that John Dalton
made a breakthrough discovery in 1803 when he realised that primal elements
such as water are actually collections of atoms. These collections which we have
come to call molecules have different characteristic from separate atoms and
behave differently. Although this realisation was important, the lack of validation
made many people ignore it. Still, Dalton left us with an even bigger concept
which constituted the basis of today’s physical science: Chemical reactions
involve the joining and separating of atoms and these atoms have unique
properties.

So basically, the way in which atoms are arranged can affect how strong or how
weak an object is, its colour or transparency or how good an object is at
conducting electricity. Pretty much everything around us does what is does
because of all the different atoms are put together and this includes also the stuff
that you would rather not have them do like breaking, smelling or running out of
power.

If we were smart we could make the stuff around us work better just by simply
doing a better job at arranging these atoms and maximising their properties in
ways we have never done before. But in order to this we would first need to have
the ability to see inside the bulk materials that surround us. You must know that
all evidence of the structure of the atoms is purely empirical, none of our fancy
and sophisticated microscopes can see inside the atoms. But thanks to the
advance of the electron microscopes we can see something a little bit bigger than
atoms - nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are ultra fine units of matter with
dimensions measured in nanometres, with a diameter between 1nm and 100 nm.
Nanoscale particles are bigger than atoms but just like atoms they are around us
everyday. They exist in the natural world and are also created as a result of human
activities: candle flames, Diesel engines, laser printers, vacuum cleaners and also
wood fires. But what’s really great about this particles at the nanoscale is that we
now have the technology to manipulate them in new ways never possible and this
means actually playing with the matter that constitutes everything around us in
order to improve materials responsibly and effectively.

What are nanoparticles?

We have been living on a scale of meters and kilometres for some time now so it is
quite hard to imagine a world beyond these measurements, a world that’s too
small to see. The world that we can now observe with the use of the electron
microscope. This powerful instrument can see up to a microscopic scale,
millionths of a meter wide.

Nanoscopic scale means a totally new tool from which we can observe really
small things, a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. To better summarise it, the
nanoscale is 1000 times smaller than the microscopes scale and a billion times
smaller than the world of meters that we know and see. But at this very small
scale, where atoms and molecules, proteins and cells are visible, here is the place
where science and technology gain an entirely new meaning. Because now not
only do we have the means to observe them but we can now also play with them
to make better use of their properties.

Nanoparticles, which are fine units of matter with sizes between 1 and 100
nanometers exhibit a different behaviour and different properties than larger
particles of the same matter. As we begin to study matter at the nanoscale we
begin to learn new things about the nature of matter, we develop new theories and
we learn about the infinite possibilities on how to manipulate their properties, to
better serve our purposes.

When particle sizes of solid matter in the visible scale are seen in an optical
microscope we can observe little difference in their properties. But when we
observe the same particles at smaller sizes ( 1 to 100 nm) with the use of a
powerful microscope, the material properties change significantly from those at
the larger scale, the bulk materials.

The properties that change are:

- Optical properties ( colour, transparency)
- Electrical properties ( conductivity)
- Physical properties ( hardness, boiling point)
- Chemical properties ( reactivity, reaction rates, dissolution)

For example nanoscale gold particles are not yellow in colour as we have been
familiarised with, at this scale they can become red or purple ( the particles are
so small that electrons are not free to move about as in bulk gold and because of
this restriction of movement, the particles react different with light). This can be
put to practical use: nanoscale gold particles selectively accumulate in tutors,
where they can enable both precise imaging and targeted laser destruction of the
tumors without harming healthy cells.

But why do properties change? The nano scale is the scale where the so called
quantum effects rule the behaviour, law and properties of the particles. And here
we can list four major ways in which nanoscale materials can differ from macro
scale materials

A. Gravitational forces become neglijable and in turn electromagnetic forces begin

to dominate. Gravitational forces are a function of mass and it becomes weak
between nanoparticles. In change electromagnetic forces become dominant as
they are not affected by mass so they can be very strong even when we have nano
sized particles.

B. Quantum mechanics is used to describe the motion and energy instead of

classical mechanics. Phenomena such as discreetness of energy, the wave-
particle duality of light and matter and Quantum tunnelling.

C. Surface to volume ration increases which means a greater amount of substance

comes in contact with the surrounding material. This results in better catalysts
since greater proportion of the material is exposed for potential reaction.

D. Random molecular Motion is significant.

At the macro scale we can observe that the random motion is small compared to
the size of the object ( e.g. we can barely detect the movement of dust particles
on the surface of matter)
At the nanoscale the movement is large compared to the size of the object (e.g.
the molecules that make up the dust particles are moving wildly compared to the
size of the particle)