Today I would like to tell you something about nanotechnology and nanoengineering, their applications and industry in which they are used and something about nanomaterials with their applications and properties. But, from the beginning, what is nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology, in simple words, is the manipulation of matter on an atomic or molecular and supramolecular scale. It is a branch of science that has truly unlimited possibilities and more often it is used in almost every kind of industry. Nanotechnology is very popular, because it is cost-effective, environmentally friendly and requires little energy.
Nanotechnology creates ideas, but nanoengineering is the one, who moves them to the material world. So now, what is nanoengineering?
It is one field of nanotechnology. It concerns itself with manipulating processes that occur (oker) on the scale of 1 – 100 nanometers. That scale is not very accurate (akiuret), because it usually depends on physical properties of the material. Nanoengineering builds biochemical structures smaller than bacterium (baktiriem), which function like microscopic factories. All the processes in this “factories” are very simple. They are biochemical processes at the atomic or molecular level. Nanoengineering takes advantages of them by direct manipulations.
We are talking about nanotechnology, so now let’s focus on how big is our small nanometer?
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. In mathematics it is written as 10-9 (ten to the power of minus nine). This is really small unit. For example, we would need 40 000 (forty thousands) nanometers to equal the width of a human’s hair. This small scale is used to write the length of light waves or distance between molecules.
Now I’m going to tell you something about applications of nanomaterials. They are just all materials built by nanostructures of different chemical elements or nanomolecules of chemical compounds. Nanomaterials are becoming more and more popular in all industries. I’ll show you the most important applications.
Medicine. They are a lot of treatments based on nanomaterials. The scientists developed non-toxic nanoemulsions which can penetrate into our organisms and kill infectious microbes such as the flu virus or anthrax spores.
Some synthetic nanomolecules are able to detect, characterize and even kill cancer cells by delivering a specific drug or gene therapy to our organisms.
Nanomaterials are also used as special polymers that can replace defective cellular proteins to treat genetic disorders.
Food industry. There are a lot of applications of nanomaterials in food industry. The most important is to use them in production of food packaging (pakedżing), reusable (rijuzybul) and single use as well. Packaging in which are present the molecules of nano-silver are able to extend the validity of the products, because they kill bacteria, mould and other infectious microbes. And they are, of course, completely harmless for human.
Textile industry. Nanomaterials, and in this case nanotubes, are used in the textile industry for example or maybe first of all in the production of special clothes. The properties of these molecules enable (enejbul) the production of waterproof, light, non-inflammable (non-inflamybul) and absorbent toxic liquids and gases materials. Jackets, trousers or other costumes made by nanotubes are relatively cheap and the process of their making isn’t very difficult. That’s why they are often used by firefighters, soldiers and of course by all of us in our everyday life.
Construction and interior design. Nanomolecules of silver and copper (kapul) enable the production of many self-cleaning and antibacterial products used in building and decorating our houses, for example: plasters, windows and paints. Using of nanocarbon makes many materials stronger and harder than traditional products.
They are many other nanomaterials in different fields of industry. We have already known innovative substances, such as dry-water, which have many possible applications, but they still need many tests. It is widely believed nanotechnology is predicted to be a multi-billion dollar business in 2015.