A rchive Date
[ 14-08-2000 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Nano-Technology ]
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[Miniature Revolution
Friday, 14 July, 2000
Nanotechnology is a form of molecular technology, which can combine biotechnology with atomic electronics. Put simply it is the technology of building very, very small things and is one of the trendiest areas of modern science. And while speculation about tiny robots cleaning the blood or machines which will build food out of air and water, is still the stuff of fiction, as Ivan Noble of BBC Science reports, researchers are already coming up with small devices which have big implications.
For years researchers and scientists have developed small items. From clocks, to stereos, computers and cameras, the world continually awaits the next big develop in the small world.
Whilst the market consumes pocket sized technology, researchers are faced with the fundamental difficulty of how to work in the world of tiny things when, by comparison, you yourself are a giant.
Tiny Machines
Making things as small as a nonometre - one thousand millionth of a metre - might sound impossible, but today's scientists are building tiny machines and structures from components as small as single atoms. The uses and techniques of such technology are wide ranging as developments at the Nanoscale Physics Research Laboratory at the University of Birmingham in central England demonstrate. Professor Richard Palmer describes one of his main tools, the scanning tunnelling microscope:
'A scanning tunnelling microscope is essentially a very sharp needle, which is housed inside the vacuum chamber.This needle can be used rather like an old-fashioned record stylus to image the atoms on the surface of a material. Just as a record stylus used to bump over the record, so this very sharp needle bumps over the individual atoms on the surface of the crystal, which we can visualise by that means. But what's exciting about the scanning tunnelling microscope, is that it can be used not just to see the atoms, but also to manipulate and control the atoms, so we can use this very fine needle now to move atoms around on an individual basis.'
'If you're just about to die of some nasty disease, we could send nanotechnology robots into your body and undo that damage'
Implications
Whilst it may be amazing to work in such finite detail, why would anyone want to go to the trouble of moving single atoms around with highly sophisticated machinery? Ian Pearson investigates the potential of future technology for British Telecom. He explains:
'Nanotechnology is a technology which allows you to reassemble atoms. It's right down to the atomic level. So you could take all the atoms in your body and you could reassemble them. Now we could use that to undo your age, if you're just about to die of some nasty disease, we could send nanotechnology robots into your body and undo that damage and repair all of the cells and make you twenty years old again. Now, people can't do that yet. The highest technology that people are using is much, much bigger than that. Even chip manufacture is just starting to get into nanotechnology areas, but eventually we will be able to copy those things that happen every day in nature. We know it's possible, because nature does it, and it's just a matter of time before we get that level of skill ourselves and then we could just put water and air into a machine and out would pop roast beef because everything's there that you need.'
Nanotechnology is the engineering of very small things
Patenting
Developments in nanotechnology happen in a fast moving world and whilst Professor Palmer and his team aren't quite warming up the barbecue yet, as his colleague Dr Brian More explains, they're already patenting applications for their tiny structures:
'We've been working for several years on gas sensors that use a very, very clever technology using what are called silicon cones. They emit electrons and from the spectrum that you analyse you can detect what gases are in there. This is going to be very useful for things like asthma sufferers, where you could wear your detector on the back of a wrist watch, and pick up the pollen and the irritants which cause asthma, they provide you an early warning system if you like.'
Learning From Nature
Building things with a microscope is a painstaking business and the key to making cheap nanomachines is to get them to build themselves. Replication happens in nature all of the time, but how close are scientists in achieving this goal with technology? Dr More explains:
'In terms of chemical self-assembly, we're fairly close. We can self-assemble quite simple molecules. In terms of the really exotic, that is self-assembling robots which will have a specific function, we're quite a long way off that.'
Whilst it looks like we'll have to wait a while for our army of invisible little helpers, in the meantime, nanotechnologists have another avenue of enquiry. Drawing on the principles of nanotechnology in nature, Dr More explains what one team in Germany has worked on:
'The human body is a nanomachine, if you like. Everything that we do is based on chemicals and reactions, which are occurring on a nanometre scale. If you look at the biological systems, you can often do then what is called biomimicry, that is to try and mimic the process that is going on naturally and try and synthesise new chemicals to do that. One of the most exciting breakthroughs in the last few years has been looking at something called the Lotus Effect - and that is where lotus leaves can self-clean simply by the nanostructure on their surfaces. As water or rain water runs over the leaf, all the dirt gets collected in the droplets and they're all self-cleaning. The possibilities here are phenomenal: self-cleaning walls, self-cleaning paint, self-cleaning glass, and it's looking at how the biological system works and the size features on that that you can mimic and get this kind of effect.'
Nanotechnology is a fairly new area of research, and most of the work going on is to develop tools and techniques rather than practical inventions. But just as the space race gave us spin-offs like digital watches and ever-smaller computers, so nanotechnologists are already finding that their skills have a surprising range of uses and given the developments in biomimicry, it is possible to imagine a time when man and machine merge.]
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