Could the people lived in 50’s imagine that scientist can rearrange or restructure molecules? It is called nanotechnology and almost 50 years ago, a famous scientist named Richard Feynman predicted nanotechnology, all before anyone had even seen an atom with a microscope. It was 1959, only two years after the first satellite was launched into space and two years before men did first spaceflight. Richard Feynman explained his ideas when he was in California Institute of Technology for the meeting which is organized every year by American Physical Society. [1] In 29 December 1959, he asked the basic question in front of lots of important scientist. “Why can’t we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?” [2] By the time he mentioned how important and possible nanotechnology is, no one could even guess about it. However he was one step ahead of the time that he lived and tried to show future, importance of nanotechnology.
Evolution of Nanotechnology: First of all, at the end of 1959’s December, Richard Feynman draw the outline of nanotechnology. He asked, “Why can’t we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?” and answered his question saying “Let's see what would be involved. The head of a pin is a sixteenth of an inch across. If you magnify it by 25,000 diameters, the area of the head of the pin is then equal to the area of all the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Therefore, all what is necessary to do is to reduce in size all the writing in the Encyclopedia by 25,000 times. Is that possible? The resolving power of the eye is about 1/120 of an inch---that is roughly the diameter of one of the little dots on the fine half-tone reproductions in the Encyclopedia. This, when you demagnify it by 25,000 times, is still 80 angstroms in diameter---32 atoms across, in an ordinary metal. In other words, one of those dots still would contain in its area 1,000 atoms. So, each dot can easily be adjusted in size as required by the photoengraving, and there is no question that there is enough room on the head of a pin to put all of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” [3] After that, approximately 22 years later, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer found the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and observed the atoms. They rendered possible to make experiments on molecules and that’s why they won Nobel Prize at 1986. One fault of STM was that they can not work on insulator materials. Binnig found a solution for this later on and invented atomic force microscopy (AFM) which is really sensitive and can measure attraction between atoms and its pin which is at the ocular part of the microscope. Finally with the help of those developments, people started to improve nanotechnology from that time to today, and step by step nanotechnology took shape but those are the main improvements.
What is Nanotechnology?
The word “nano” comes from Ancient Greek language and it means dwarf. Besides, nano is one of the SI Prefixes which describes one billionth. Working on very little molecules or atoms, nanotechnology provides us a large scale of advancing in micron-size particles in frame of human interfering or control. Put another way, nanotechnology is an approach method which aims to remodel or to restructure particles in frame of technology developed for different domains such as health, industry, IT.
As scientific definition, National Nanotechnology Initiative stated “Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Encompassing nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at this length scale.” [4]
What is a Nanostructure?
Structure which is intermediate between molecular and microscopic sizes called nanostructure. There are two type of microscopes - scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and atomic force microscope (AFM) - and with the help of them scientist can see atoms and reaction of atoms. [5] Dr. Don Eigler is a scientist who specializes about nanometer structure scale and he discovered how to change atomic level of materials and proved by spelling I-B-M letters for showing his ability about building structures. He also showed atomic switch which arrange the current intensity of atoms. [6] Thus, these scientific improvements enabled making new nanostructure which is not occurring in the world.
What are the activity domains of Nanostructure?
First of all, nanostructures are in phase of development. This development is being provided strictly flexible and fast. If we consider that nanotechnology is advancing thank to interdisciplinary scientific approach methods, it is certain that activity domains of nanostructure would be more various and large-scaled. Nowadays, scientists found ways such as health, industry, military, energy, materials, etc where they take advantage of nanotechnology.
Nano-Health: One of the biggest problems of recent days is being unable to interfere to exact points that cause the illnesses. As a result of using medicine, healthy cells are damaged or affected with the target cells and that would also cause side effects. However, scientist invented new methods with the aid of nanotechnology that works according to the directive which would be given by doctor. As an example, Philips invented a new pill which has a microprocessor and wireless communication via transmitters and kind of medicines in it. When people get the pill, it starts searching for the place that caused the illness and starts working over there, thus we’ll describe this as a mini hospital. First of all, it doesn’t cause almost any side effects. Secondly, doctor can order the correspondent medicine that he want and identify the dose depending on size of place where the sickness is. [7] On the other hand, there are lots of cardiac patients who use stint for keeping their blood vessel opened. However, usually those stints choked up too. Thus, scientist improved a stint which has nano materials in it and with the assistance of those materials stint gets clean over and over again, and that’s why it doesn’t choke up.
Nano-Military: If one soldier got everything that he needed to be, his cargo would be approximately 50 kg which is really heavy. That’s why scientist have been started to work about smart uniform which must be done with nanotechnology, because they needed to minimize the entire material that in the uniform. On the other hand, they also tried to make uniform which can see, touch, feel and heard also make decision according to the condition. Consequently, they need to use nano sensor for being able to put those features on uniforms.
Nano-Energy: If people can’t find a solution for extreme energy consumption, all energy resources exist in the world would exhaust about 50 years. Also carbonic energy resources are polluting the world and causing some problems for the nature. Therefore scientists are looking for new energy resources. Most important experiment about finding new energy resources is hydrogen energy. However, hydrogen is hard to store, but some scientist said that it’ll be easy if we store hydrogen by using atomic links on carbon nanotubes. (* “A nanotube is a nanometer scale wire-like structure that is most often composed of carbon”) [8]
Nano-Industry: By using nano materials, people added new feature to the industrial materials and a very important evaluation happened in the industry domain. For example, adding nano silver particles into the sock’s lace makes the sock antibacterial, thus sock does not make any bad smell. There are other things that could be added into the cloth and with the help of them; we will get really interesting clothes. As an example, if we made pants with a cloth that doesn’t lock the water, it would not get dirty and this means we should not necessarily wash it or what if t-shirt charges phones with the help of nano-sensor which gets energy from sun.
New Aspects and Approaches of Nanotechnology: Due to new interdisciplinary researches, it is certain that nanotechnology will take more places in our daily life. Biologic and Genetic Researches, Chemistry and new material development are some basic areas that we would take more advantage of nanotechnology. Also, being a different interdisciplinary approach, Japanese model of Nanotechnology which is based on “Nanotech Mainframe” gives us more idea about new aspects of advancing in this area. “Nanotech Mainframe” is a scientific interdisciplinary approach method takes chemistry, advanced material using, advanced IT using, mobility skills oriented solutions as mainframe.
Nanotechnology provides us an opportunity of being able to use materials in different ways. It is extremely important because the countries which tried to use that opportunity would have a strategic power. The key fact here is using nanotechnology for humanity. Nanotechnology is forthcoming technology which would cover most of the active domains in the world. As a result, nanotechnology gives us a hopeful futuristic aspect in frame of finding solutions for health, nature, industry which could change our prior problem task list.
Deylem ONURSAL
