Nanotechnology and it’s Benefits

Nanotechnology is a protective coating that enhances products of any sort of material. It can strengthen and improve the assets to benefit both manufacturers and end users. With the help of Nanotechnology, which is an applied science, new products are created to protect various materials.

Protective coating is a result of nanotechnology. It makes the materials weather resistant and the surface becomes easy to clean as well. Its protective coating exhibits very high resistance to corrosion attack, long term stability in aggressive conditions and an environmentally friendly, easy and economical preparation procedure.

Nanotechnology and its characteristics will be different in the case of each material surface and it is available with standard features and techniques. Nanotechnology uses more techniques and tools for its updating. Nanotechnology research has been made continuously to update technology using different techniques and tools available in the world. New technologies have been used to measure the molecular interactions that take place.

Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize the life of materials used in every sector be it industrial, residential, medicines, genetics, communication, textile and many more. It helps to improve products and production processes with better techniques and new functionality.

In coming years, products based on nanotechnology are expected to impact nearly all-industrial sectors and enter the consumer markets in large quantities. Considering the future prospects of nanotechnology, countries across the world are investing heavily in this sector. Diamon Fusion International is one such example that makes the optimum use of nanotechnology by providing glass protection,hydrophobic coating, protective coating to various materials depending on there characters.

Nanotechnology Applications for Electronics

Nanotechnology and electronics

Nanotechnology is already being used by the electronic industry and you will be surprised to know that many of today’s electronics have already incorporated many applications that the nanotechnology science has developed. For example, new computer microprocessors have less than 100 nanometers (nm) features. Smaller sizes mean a significant increase in speed and more processing capability.


These advances will undoubtedly help achieve better computers. However, at some point in time (very near in the future) current electronic technology will no longer be enough to handle the demand for new chips microprocessors. Right now, the method for chip manufacturing is known as lithography or etching. By this technology, a probe literally writes over a surface the chip circuit. This way of building circuits in electronic chips has a limitation of around 22 nanometers (most advanced chip processors uses 60-70 nm size features). Below 22 nm errors will occur and short circuits and silicon limitations will prevent chip manufacturing.


What's on the future?
Nanotechnology may offer new ways of working for electronics. Nanotechnology science is developing new circuit materials, new processors, new means of storing information and new manners of transferring information. Nanotechnology can offer greater versatility because of faster data transfer, more “on the go” processing capabilities and larger data memories.


A new field is emerging in electronics that will be a giant leap in computer and electronics science. It is the field of quantum computing and quantum technology. Quantum computing is area of scientific knowledge aimed at developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory. In quantum computing the “qbit” instead of the traditional bit of information is used. Traditionally, a bit can assume two values: 1 and 0. All the computers up-to-date are based on the “bit” principle. However, the new “qbit” is able to process anything between 0 and 1. This implies that new types of calculations and high processing speeds can be achieved.


Quantum computers have been more of a research area until now. But recently, the first quantum computer has been built in the United States, according to a recent paper published on the prestigious scientific journal Nature Physics. This new computer is said to achieve unseen processing speeds to the tune of a billion times per second, making this the fastest chip on earth.

Nanotechnology Applications for Healthcare: Treatment of Diseases

There are well-established treatments for known diseases. However, when a new illness appears we should not be surprised to see an old-fashioned treatment meet little success. Nanotechnology can help to address the issue of treatments of both old and new diseases.


For starters nanotechnology can provide personalized medicine; that is, unique, individualized medications for each patient. Second, nanotechnology can help treat new diseases by designing new drugs, or by new ways of delivering known drugs. Also, it helps by reducing the risk of rejection or adverse reactions in implants.

Personalized Medicine
Drugs to treat diseases are a risky proposition. Individuals may react different to the same drug dose or even to the drug. Traditionally medicine has taken the “average” respond approach to treat diseases. However, an effective dose for one patient or a certain drug can be toxic for another individual.

As we know more about the human genome, we realize that there may be genes that predispose a patient to a certain disease or to a certain drug. Nanotechnology is helping in this area of illness treatment by designing and applying tools that can rapidly analyze and detect certain genes and gene sequences. In this way if a patient has a gene that predisposes him or her to a bad reaction then a new drug can be chosen for him. This is personalized medicine, medicine targeted to each patient.

New Methods of Drug Delivery
One of the issues with traditional medicine is the uncertainty of knowing whether the administered drug will reach the intended organ or area of the body. Nanotechnology helps to solve this issue because specific carriers can be designed for specific drugs so the drug goes right to the target organ and not to another one. For example in cancer therapies a specific nanoparticle formulation has been designed for the drug paclitaxel. The new formulation (nanoparticle plus drug) is less toxic than the free drug injected to the patient.

New Drugs
Certain drugs are difficult to make because of structural constraints. Nanotechnology can help design these drugs by using a controlled manufacturing system at the atomic and molecular level. In addition, the drug can be designed such as to eliminate the toxic part of it and leave the “effective” one. Currently, new asthma, HIV, And Cancer killing drugs are being designed using nanotechnology systems.

Implants
One of the issues with implants is the interaction of the new implant with biological tissues and cells of the patient. Sometimes adverse reactions occur, and although there are methods to minimize this, many implants fail because of body rejection of the new implant. Nanotechnology can offer some solutions in this area of health care. For example in bone implants were rejections can occur, titanium bone implants are being covered with a special nanocoat of nanostructured titanium dioxide which helps integrate the implant into the bone.

Application of Nanotechnology in Medicine

Nanotechnology is the branch of science which deals with the study of matter at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotechnology has diversity of applications for example it is used in the device physics as well as medicine. Medicine is one field which has made use of nanotechnology in its various applications. Though some of the techniques of nanotechnology in medicine are only just in the minds of the scientists, some techniques are under the development process and some are in the market successfully being used.

Some researchers refer nanotechnology as nanomedicine because nanoparticles are under development for medical purposes and some researchers use the term nanomedicine to make such nanorobots which can repair the damaged cells in the human body. But it is a fact that nanomedicine is playing an important role in detecting the diseases in the human body and is developing cures for them.

Nanotechnology and Drug Delivery:-
One of the most important applications of nanotechnology in medicine is the drug delivery. This application is still under development. It will help the doctors to inject the drug in the patient's body in the form of nanoparticles. The nanoparticles would also be used to heat or light the diseased cells such as cancer cells. The benefit of these particles is that they can target only those cells which are damaged and this way these cells can be treated without creating damage to the healthy human cells. Nanoparticles also make the earlier detection of the disease and doctors can find cure against the disease efficiently and rapidly.

Chemotherapy is the technique used to kill cancerous cells from the body. Now nanoparticles will deliver the drug of chemotherapy. Such drugs are under development and will be in the market soon. People who hate injections, there is a good news for them that now the drug will be encapsulated in the nanoparticles. This way the drug will easily pass from stomach into the bloodstream because of its smaller size. The techniques are being developed which will make drugs using nanoparticles and those drugs would be taken orally.

Nanotechnology and Diagnostic and Imaging Techniques:-
There is one more positive point about nanotechnology is that the quantum dots are now being used to detect tumors of cancers in the human body and are helpful in diagnosis tests. Though this technique is still in the experimental stages but it will be an efficient approach to treat cancer. Other nanoparticles like iron oxide are being used to do MRI of the cancer patients. The mechanism of treatment is that iron oxide is bound with a peptide. When they are released in the body, they bind to the cancer cells. Iron oxide contains the magnetic property and when it binds to the tumor, it shows images from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scan.

There are other applications of nanoparticles also that they can bind to the proteins or other molecules and help in the detection if the disease. But this method is still at the experimental level and will definitely provide efficient means of treating the diseases.

Nanotechnology and therapy techniques:-
Therapy techniques are also applying nanotechnology to improve their mechanisms. Buckyballs are the nano-substances which help to reduce the inflammation produced during an allergic reaction and have the ability to trap the free radicals which are produced during any allergic reactions. Similarly nanoshells are the substances which help destroy the cancerous cells from the body when the cells are heated by infrared light. They also avoid the damage to the surrounding healthy cells. One other use of nanoparticles is that they can be used to produce electrons which destroy the cancerous cells from the body and there are very less chances that the healthy cells will be affected. Nanoparticles can be applied in place of radiation therapy avoiding destruction of healthy cells.

The use of aluminosilicate nanoparticles in the trauma patients is very helpful because they have the ability to reduce bleeding by absorbing water. It results in the quick clot of blood because when the water will be absorbed from the blood, the blood will become dry.

Nanotechnology and Antimicrobial technique:-
Nanotechnology is also helpful in killing the microbes. Nanocrystalline silver is a nanoparticle which kills the microbes from the wound. Some nanoparticles are used to treat infections as they kill bacteria because of the presence of nitric oxide gas in them. When the cream is applied on the infection, nanoparticles release nitric oxide gas which kills the bacteria.

Nanostructured solar cells

Conversion into electrical power of even a small fraction of the solar radiation
incident on the Earth’s surface has the potential to satisfy the world’s energy demands without generating CO2 emissions. Current photovoltaic technology is
not yet fulfilling this promise, largely due to the high cost of the electricity produced. Although the challenges of storage and distribution should not be
underestimated, a major bottleneck lies in the photovoltaic devices themselves.
Improving efficiency is part of the solution, but diminishing returns in that area
mean that reducing the manufacturing cost is absolutely vital, whilst still retaining good efficiencies and device lifetimes.

Solution-processible materials, e.g. organic molecules, conjugated polymers
and semiconductor nanoparticles, offer new routes to the low-cost production of
solar cells. The challenge here is that absorbing light in an organic material
produces a coulombically bound exciton that requires dissociation at a
donor–acceptor heterojunction. A thickness of at least 100 nm is required to
absorb the incident light, but excitons only diffuse a few nanometres before
decaying. The problem is therefore intrinsically at the nano-scale: we need
composite devices with a large area of internal donor–acceptor interface, but
where each carrier has a pathway to the respective electrode. Dye-sensitized and
bulk heterojunction cells have nanostructures which approach this challenge in
different ways, and leading research in this area is described in many of the
articles in this special issue.

This issue is not restricted to organic or dye-sensitized photovoltaics, since
nanotechnology can also play an important role in devices based on more conventional inorganic materials. In these materials, the electronic properties can be controlled, tuned and in some cases completely changed by nanoscale confinement. Also, the techniques of nanoscience are the natural ones for investigating the localized states, particularly at surfaces and interfaces, which are often the limiting factor in device performance.

This issue provides concrete examples of how the techniques of nanoscience and nanotechnology can be used to understand, control and optimize the performance of novel photovoltaic devices.

Nanostructure Fabrication Processes

Progress in understanding and optimizing materials processing in wet chemical environments requires the use of in situ measurements of the structure and dynamics of the metal-electrolyte interface under realistic conditions. These measurements can provide insight into the mechanisms of relevant atomic, molecular, and mesoscale film growth and dissolution processes.

This project has several thrust areas ranging from measurements and modeling of surfactant mediated growth to the investigation of both surface and thin film growth stress. Particular attention has been given to the role of electrolyte additives in the formation and performance of advanced nanoscale and mesoscale interconnects as used in state of the art microelectronic devices. Measurements are also underway that detail the use of underpotential deposition (upd) reactions to precisely control the composition and structure of 2-D and 3-D alloys. This is complemented by measurements of stress changes that accompany alloy formation as well as the inverse dealloying process. An integral part of the program is the development of mechanistic linkage between atomic and molecular phenomena and rational design of the desired nanostructures.

Additional Technical Details:
This year we demonstrated the first example of void-free trench filling with ferromagnetic materials. Feature filling involves a new mechanism of superconformal growth that uses a single inhibitor whose consumption during deposition gives rise to positive feedback. Coupling of the non-linear dynamics with the non-planar substrate geometry gives rise to void-free nickel deposition in the recessed surface features as shown in the cross section TEM images given below. Two types of molecules have been shown to yield this effect; cationic Nbearing polymers and more recently certain benzimidazole derivatives. The latter provide feature filling dynamics that offer seamless integration with conventional Damascene processing and thereby the prospect of introducing ferromagnetic materials into 3-D metallization for ULSICMOS and MEMS applications.

Measurements developed for upd processes of alloy deposition have received significant attention in the past year. Practical interest in the production of Pt-transition metal alloys for use as either hard magnetic materials for memory applications and /or as potential fuel cell electrocatalyst has motivated much of this work. The Pt-Cu system has been examined as a model upd-codeposition system due to the absence of parasitic reactions. As shown below, co-deposition of Cu with Pt occurs at potentials well positive of that required to deposit pure Cu. The figure also demonstrates the use of in situ quartz crystal gravimetry for the determination of alloy composition along with a direct comparison to post deposition ex-situ methods.

The upd process has also been applied to Pt-Ni and Pt-Co alloys and preliminary studies indicate that these alloy films are more catalytic than pure Pt for the oxygen reduction reaction; the latter being a central impediment to improved fuel cell performance.

In order to gain a deeper insight into upd and molecular adsorption processes relevant to a wide range of electrochemical processing issues, a variety of in situ scanning tunneling microscope (STM), atomic force microscope (AFM), stress and gravimetric measurements are underway.

MSEL has recently constructed an optical bench for in situ measurement of surface stress during electrochemical processing using the wafer curvature method. Forces on the order of 0.008 N/m (23 km radius of curvature) can be resolved, sufficient to study the adsorption of upd and molecular monolayers. This powerful method is capable of monitoring the surface stress associated with reversible upd reactions such as Pb onto the (111)-textured Au surface as shown below.

The stress transient shows four regimes of behavior from ClO4- desorption, Pb-Au bond formation, stress relaxation due to hcp-Pb island coalescence, and electrocompression of the monolayer at potentials just positive of bulk Pb deposition. Interestingly, these measurements show that the complete Pb monolayer behaves as a free-standing elastic film where the stress - strain proportionality has a value equal to the biaxial modulus for Pb (111) in the bulk. Similar work has examined the upd of Bi on Au. Further work is underway exploring these timely and exciting issues.

Nanostructure

A nanostructure is an object of intermediate size between molecular and microscopic (micrometer-sized) structures.

In describing nanostructures it is necessary to differentiate between the number of dimensions on the nanoscale. Nanotextured surfaces have one dimension on the nanoscale, i.e., only the thickness of the surface of an object is between 0.1 and 100 nm. Nanotubes have two dimensions on the nanoscale, i.e., the diameter of the tube is between 0.1 and 100 nm; its length could be much greater. Finally, spherical nanoparticles have three dimensions on the nanoscale, i.e., the particle is between 0.1 and 100 nm in each spatial dimension. The terms nanoparticles and ultrafine particles (UFP) often are used synonymously although UFP can reach into the micrometre range. The term 'nanostructure' is often used when referring to magnetic technology.

List of nanostructures

• Nanocages
• Nanocomposite
• Nanofabrics
• Nanofiber
• Nanoflake
• Nanoflower
• Nanofoam
• Nanomesh
• Nanoparticle
• Nanopillar
• Nanopin film
• Nanoring
• Nanorod
• Nanoshell
• Quantum dot
• Quantum heterostructure
• Sculptured thin film