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Nanotechnology: A New Frontier


10m read
·Nov 4, 2024

The world is shrinking; there's a deep and relatively unexplored world beyond what the human eye can see. The microscopic world is truly alien and truly fascinating. I'm delving further than the microscopic scale; I'm going to explore the potentials of working at a nanoscopic level, working at a level a billion times smaller than the average scale we work at today. This is nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology means any technology on a nanoscale that has applications in the real world. Nanotechnology is the science of building small, and I mean really, really small. It's pretty difficult to imagine how small an animator is, but let's just take a moment to try and wrap our heads around it. The tip of a pen is around a million nanometers wide, so nowhere near close. A single sheet of paper is around 75,000 nanometers thick. My human hair is around 50,000 nanometers thick, and I ran out of things to compare.

Let's just take a different approach. If a nanometer was the size of a football, the coronavirus would be the size of an adult male, a donut would be the size of New Zealand, and a chicken would be the size of the Earth. In fact, on a comparative scale, if each person on Earth was the size of a nanometer, every single person on the planet would fit into a single car—a Hot Wheels car. You get the idea; nano is super, super tiny. We're talking subatomic, so that's how big, or rather small, a nanometer is.

But why does it matter? Why look at really small things? Well, they ultimately teach us about the universe that we live in, and we can do really interesting things with them. When we move into the nanoscale, we can work with new domains in physics that don't really apply at any other scale. Nanoscience and nanotechnology can be used to reshape the world around us. Literally everything on Earth is made up of atoms: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and houses we live in, our own bodies.

Now think for a moment about how a car works. It's not only about having all the right parts; they also need to be in the right place in order for the car to work properly. This seems obvious, right? Well, in pretty much the same way, how the different atoms in something are arranged determines what pretty much anything around you does. With nanotechnology, it's possible to manipulate and take advantage of this, much like arranging Lego blocks to create a model, building, or airplane, or spaceship.

But there's a catch, and here's where things start to really get interesting. The properties of things also change when they're made smaller, phenomenon based on quantum effects. The strange and sometimes counterintuitive behavior of atoms and subatomic particles occur naturally when matter is manipulated and organized at the nanoscale. These so-called quantum effects dictate the behavior and properties of particles. So we know that the properties of materials are size-dependent when working at the nanoscale. This means that scientists have the power to adjust and fine-tune material properties, and they've actually been able to do this for some time now.

It's possible to change properties such as melting point, fluorescence, electrical conductivity, magnetic permeability, and chemical reactivity, to just name a few. But where can we actually see the results of this kind of work? Well, everywhere. There are numerous commercial products already on the market that you and I use daily that wouldn't exist in the same way without having been manipulated and modified using nanotechnology.

Some examples include clear nanoscale films on glasses and other surfaces to make them water-resistant, scratch-resistant, or anti-reflective. Cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, and spacecraft can be made out of increasingly lightweight materials. We're shrinking the size of computer chips, in turn helping to enlarge memory capacity. We're making our smartphones even smarter with features like nano generators to charge our phones while we walk. We're enabling the delivery and release of drugs to an exact location within the body with precise timing, making treatments more effective than ever before. There's quite a list, and that's only a few of the potential applications.

Let's delve into a few of these in more detail. Nanotechnology has been pivotal in advancing computing and electronics, leading to faster, smaller, smarter, and more portable systems and products. It is now considered completely normal for a computer to be carried with one hand, while just 40 years ago, a computer infinitely slower was the size of a room. This has been made possible through the miniaturization of the world of microprocessors. For example, transistors—the switches that enable all modern computing—have reduced drastically in the briefest amount of time, from roughly 250 nanometers in size in the year 2000 to just a single nanometer in 2016. This revolution in transistor size may soon enable the memory for an entire computer to be stored in a single tiny chip.

In increasingly faster systems, it is expected that using magnetic RAM or random access memory with these nanoscale junctions, computers will soon be able to boot almost instantly. Flexible, bendable, foldable, and stretchable electronics have been developed using semiconductor nanomembranes. They're monocrystalline structures with thicknesses of less than a few hundred nanometers. In normal terms, they're really small and super bendy. They're particularly useful for applications in smartphones and wearable technology like smartwatches.

Nanotechnology is a definite answer to a digital world that is focused on becoming smaller and more efficient. But it can also help us start to clean up some of the world's bigger and more pressing problems. There are many applications for detecting and cleaning up environmental contaminants. It is anticipated that nanotechnology could contribute significantly to environmental and climate protection by saving raw materials, energy, and water, and reducing greenhouse gases and hazardous waste. From increasing the durability of materials so they last longer and reduce waste to the creation of insulation materials that improve the efficiency of paper towels—allowing them to absorb 20 times their own weight—nanotechnology really has the potential to do great things for the conservation of our planet and the human race.

The availability of fresh, clean drinking water is an increasingly pressing issue that can be linked back to population growth, urban mitigation, pollution, and the vast effects of events associated with climate change. Nanotechnology holds the power and promise to not only detect pollutants but to filtrate and purify. The magnetic interactions between ultra-small specks of dust can remove arsenic. This is incredible, given that it is naturally present at high levels in the groundwater in a number of countries. Similarly, the development of nanoparticles that can purify water pollutants, which cost less than the process of pumping it out of the ground for treatment, also holds great promise.

Basically getting clean water is a huge problem, and nanotechnology can help solve it. This all sounds almost too good to be true. There have to be downsides to the seemingly endless potential of nanotechnology for the environment. Actually quantifying and confirming the effects of a product on the environment, both positive and negative, is achieved by examining the entire life cycle—from the production of the raw material to disposal at the end of its life cycle. There is a genuine concern that nanotechnology will further increase energy and environmental costs, given that the production of the nanomaterials themselves takes a large amount of energy, water, and environmentally problematic chemicals, such as solvents.

In order to produce things that will help the environment, we have to use things that will harm the environment. Scientists are on the verge of new frontiers all the time. Nanotechnology is an act of exploration, and we're very much still in the early stages. But we're closer than you might think to this actual goal. The idea of subatomic disease-fighting machines has been in science fiction for decades, so this idea is not really a new one. But we've definitely come a lot closer to making this idea a reality in the past decade.

It sounds like a near-perfect solution to many modern medical problems, but let's just explore how and where science fiction meets fact and what challenges may lie ahead. Nanotechnology is already heavily incorporated into medical tools, knowledge, and therapies already widely in use. Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology in medicine. It's used for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Nanoparticles can encapsulate or otherwise help to deliver medication directly to cancer cells and minimize the risk of damage to healthy tissue. This could ultimately change the way cancer is currently treated and dramatically reduce the toxic effects of chemotherapy. Suffice to say, researchers are working on it.

The increased capabilities of imaging and diagnostic tools enabled by nanotechnology are also paving the way for increased success rates for many different therapies. Quantum dots are tiny semiconductor particles just a few nanometers in size, sometimes referred to as artificial atoms due to their ability to behave like naturally occurring atoms or molecules because of those quantum phenomena I mentioned earlier. Quantum dots have optical and electric properties that differ from larger particles. As a result, they have many applications and are widely used in various sectors.

However, creating quantum dots is an extremely expensive process which generates a huge amount of waste, and we find ourselves revisiting those environmental concerns. Amazingly, though, scientists have recently developed a low-cost method to make these quantum dots using some chemicals and green leaf extracts—tea leaves. The procedure is economical, and the by-products are non-toxic. The results are genuinely amazing, with heaps of potential. The research proves that the quantum dots created with tea leaves can penetrate the skin and reduce the growth of cancer cells by about 80 percent. So, not a cure, but a huge leap forward in progress that doesn't come with the environmental payoff.

It's not just how we face the big diseases that nanomedicine can transform. Researchers are now exploring ways to grow complex tissues with the goal of one day growing human organs for transplant. Nanotechnology can also improve the way vaccines are delivered and how successful they are, including vaccine delivery without the use of needles. Still a work in progress, though an amazing feat once achieved. But the emerging era in nanomedicine really is the era of the nanobot.

Nanorobots are building tiny packages that can complete tasks in an automated way. They hold the ability to sense, respond, detect friend or foe within the body, and deliver payloads and cargo, all at the nanoscale. Why do we need them? Well, conventional water-soluble drugs are far from perfect and present difficulties in treatment. However, diagnostic nano machines allow doctors to monitor the internal chemistry of the body's organs, providing direct access to diseased areas.

Nanobots can also be equipped with wireless transmitters so that doctors can change the treatment method to respond specifically to the state of the medical condition. They also hold the potential to completely replace pacemakers by treating the heart's cells directly. Research regarding nanobots and medicine offers several opportunities, such as artificial antibodies, artificial white and red blood cells, and antiviral nanobots. They are super durable and could theoretically operate for years without any damage.

Nanobots, in fact, hold the potential to address many health problems besides cancer, such as unblocking blood vessels in hard-to-reach areas, taking biopsies, or measuring the level of certain chemicals in otherwise inaccessible areas of the body. So we are much, much closer than you might have thought. In the field of medical nanorobotics holds considerable promise for advancing medical progress.

But the phrase "so close yet so far" comes to mind because there are many challenges and roadblocks to face before surgical nanobots will reach clinical trials. A few months ago, I made a video on neurolink, and they're facing the same exact issues we mentioned here. Scientists have numerous challenges to overcome before the potential of nanobots and medicine can truly be realized. Getting the bots to travel safely where we want them to in the body and actually having them stay there long enough to carry out a procedure is incredibly difficult.

Scientists also have yet to work out how to keep the nanobots from being destroyed and expelled from the body like any other toxic or foreign bodies. So while nanobots hold the key to an infinitely less toxic solution to treating cancer, the challenges in getting the solution to the stage of becoming a viable treatment are still a bit in the future. We're not quite there yet. However, if past progress has anything to go by, I don't think we're so far off.

Nanotechnology sounds like a solid solution to many modern medical and technological issues. It makes you wonder how prominent they'll be in daily life in the future. If you're interested in nanotechnology and want to learn more about it, Brilliant has exactly what you're looking for. Brilliant is the best place to go to learn about everything math, science, and computer science related. It's extremely interactive, with each course either having code to write, puzzles to solve, or some other challenge to overcome.

They're constantly adding new courses and finding new ways to challenge your brain. For example, they have a course on computational biology. There's actually a quiz that talks about Richard Feynman and his argument for nanotechnology, as well as some of the limits that you run into. The RNA enzymes they discuss essentially function as nano machines at that scale. Brilliant has courses that cover almost any science-related interest you have; it's definitely worth looking into.

They show you what you're learning and provide visual examples to solidify your understanding. I find this a lot easier than learning through actual books or videos on YouTube, as each course is tailored to making things simple to understand. With over 60 courses and new ones being added constantly, you are guaranteed to learn something new. If this sounds fun and you're interested, head to brilliant.org/aperture for a free trial. The first 200 of you to check it out will get 20% off of a premium subscription and will allow you to take every single course that Brilliant has to offer. You'll be supporting my channel and your future at the same time.

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