AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NANO WORLD

 WHAT IS NANOTECHNOLOGY?

As the name suggests, nanotechnology is the study of materials ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers(nm). One nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Let’s understand how small a nanometer is. If you line up ten hydrogen atoms end to end, you will end up with a structure having a length of 1 nm. Even a strand of human hair is 75,000 to 80,000 nm wide.

Though the term ‘nanotechnology’ was coined by Norio Taniguchi in 1974, the foundation of its concepts was first laid by Richard Feynman,who is now known as the father of nanotechnology. In his talk, he described the possibility of synthesis by manipulating atoms saying, ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. Engineers, biologists, and computer scientists are collaborating with chemists, physicists, and medical professionals to define the applications, direction, and progress of nanotechnology – in essence, nanotechnology is a collection of disciplines building on one another. Nanotech has a great potential to become the technology of the future.

There are two approaches when it comes to nanotech- 

• The Top-Down Approach-A top-down method is analogous to a sculptor chiselling away at a slab of marble; we start with a large scale and then work our way down to our nano-scale product. (This is the method used by the computer industry to design microprocessors.)

• The Bottom-Up Approach- This approach entails building our product one atom at a time. This can be time-consuming, so a so-called self-assembly process is employed — under specific conditions, the atoms and molecules spontaneously arrange themselves into the final product.