by Senadheera Jayakody

Created on: November 27, 2009   Last Updated: December 01, 2009

Nanotechnology is one of the most emerging technologies in the world today. Nanotechnology simply can be defined as the production and application of various components by controlling size and shape at the nanometer scale. A nanometer equals to 10-9m or one millionth of a millimeter. Generally these production techniques are considered nano scale when its size is less than 100 nanometers (100 nm).

There are two techniques used for the manufacture of nanomaterials. In the "top down method" very small components are produced from larger parts of materials. Other method is called "bottom up method". In the second method production is done by processing atom by atom or molecule by molecule.

Properties of Nanomaterials

One of dominant property that makes nanomaterials differ is their massive surface area. For an example let's imagine there is a 27 grams of silver coin with a diameter of about 40 mm. This coin's surface area is nearly 28 cm2 when calculated. Then imagine that 1 nm particles are made using this silver coin. Now if we calculate the new surface area of those particles, it will be four million times larger than the surface area of the initial coin's surface area. Therefore it is clear how the surface can be dramatically increased in nanotechnology. But what is the use of larger surface area? When surface area can be increased in this manner, these materials become more chemically reactive compared to its larger form. This means their properties can be improved to a greater extent. This is how extremely strong carbon nano tubes are produced.

The other property of nanomaterials is the fact that in the nano level, quantum effects have a significant effect on the behavior of particles. Then the magnetic, optical and electrical properties of the material have special effects. As an example melting point of Gold can be reduced from 10600 C to 6000 C if it can be rendered in to particles with the radius of 2 nm.

Applications of Nanomaterials

Potential in nanotechnology is simply limitless. But one of the major drawbacks is the involved production cost. Nanotechnology is already employed in many engineering applications. For the production of super capacitors nanotechnology is used. In a capacitor the capacitance can be increased by improving the surface area. Electrode material with very high surface area like activated carbon is used in the production of this type of capacitors. The very high surface area means more ions can be stored giving a super capacitance. Another popular application of nanomaterials is the production of nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are such a nanotube. As a comparison high carbon steel has tensile strength of nearly 1.2 GPa. But the tensile strength of CNT is 63 GPa. Also carbon nanotubes is one of the strongest materials known that have been created using the nanotechnology.

Regeneration of bones is a medical application of biomaterials, because specially designed nanomaterials have the ability to form in contact with bone crystals. There are glasses have produced with the ability of self cleaning. They have coated a nano structured wax so that they have self cleaning feature. Nano-filters have manufactured to have perfectly clean water. Tanks with extremely strong armor and bullet proof clothes for soldiers are some applications in the defense sector.

Perfect surfaces can be produced that needs little or no cleaning using nanomaterials. What about clothes with no cleaning is ever needed? It seems impossible but when we are thinking about nanotechnology, nanomaterials and its present achievements, we have to say anything is possible.

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