I don’t know why but we have a fantasy to miniaturize the electronic things. Just compare the mobile phone in 2000s and that of 2020, size has changed but performance has improved exponentially. There are many sectors where this technique is used (miniaturization). The technology is improving while the size is decreasing.
There is a technology that is continuing the trend being millions of times more efficient. This is the sector where many countries are investing 1/3rd of their research budget. Japan increased its investment by 6 times in this sector. India, China and South Korea are at the front to become masters of this technology. The technology and sector I am talking about is NANOTECHNOLOGY.
You must have heard of Nanotechnology if you have watched the movies like Black Panther, Infinity War, Transformers, Terminator, etc.
What is Nanotechnology?
“Nano” means 1 billionth of a meter (0.000000001 meter). The human hair is 10 millionth of a meter (0.00001 meter). Human hair is the naked eye visibility limit, if anything is smaller than that, we cannot see it with naked eye. I think you got the feel of how small is a nanometer.
Building the things on the scale of nanometer is referred as nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the future technology. There are many fields where nanotechnology is put to use, may it be medical science or food industry, robotics or clothing, everywhere nanotechnology finds its application.
The properties of material changes at nanoscale than that were on microscale like opaque material becomes transparent, insoluble substance becomes soluble. The color of the substance can also be changed. The best example is gold, the color of gold can be changed to violet, red and some more.
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1st image - Gold bars,
2nd image - different colors of gold |
We will deal with its widespread applications in the next sections.
Nanobots
Nanobots are the robots whose components are of the scale of nanometers. Few years ago, Nanobots were limited to science fiction only, but today they have become a reality and are used worldwide. Nanobots can go to the parts where we can neither go nor see it without the modern devices. Nanobots find applications in medical science, food industry and several other sectors. They are programmed for special tasks and can be controlled with radio signals. Here are some of the applications of Nanobots in brief: -
1. Nanobots in treating cancer
Treatment of cancer with present day technology has many side effects. So, to reduce or to completely remove the side effects nanobots can be used. They can help in identifying the cancer cells and then they can destroy them. Nanobots release the drugs on the cancer cells directly. This has minimal side effects as the process is done with maximum precision and accuracy. In 2014, university of California injected a living nanobot motor in living cell, the results were positive.
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| Nanobot fighting cancer cells |
2. Nanobots in food industry
Nanobots are very small, of the size of pathogens. So, they can monitor the pathogens on crops and increase the efficiency of fertilizers. They can also manipulate the genetics of the crops allowing them to grow in most hostile conditions.
3. Nanobots in medical science
Nanobots have other application also in medical science, besides treating cancer. They can be injected into the body to work at the cellular levels. This can be very helpful in treating and studying many diseases which have their roots at the cellular level. They can help repair the tissues and white blood cells.
There is a protective mechanism inside the body which protects us from external agent. It is similar to our army, which protects us from enemies. We treat several diseases by vaccination process, in which we need to insert external agents (mostly, killed microorganisms) into the body. Some diabetic patients need external supply of insulin. The protective mechanism identifies them as a threat and destroys them before they can show their effects. The nanobots can come into action here, they can act as a shielding agent encapsulating the drugs. So that they can be released in slow and control manner without getting destroyed.
There are many more applications of nanobots. These are the potential applications which are mentioned above.
Nanomaterials
These are the materials whose size is of the nanoscale. The nanomaterials have wide varieties of applications. I will discuss some of them below: -
1. Nanomaterials as environment cleaner Nanomaterials can be used for purification of water. Water consisting of toxic particles can be neutralized by absorbing the particles. This is cheap and long-lasting process.
Nanomaterials can act as a filter in factories and industries. They can eliminate the residue before being released into the atmosphere. They can also be used to clean the oil spill as they are more attracted towards oil.
2. Nanomaterials make substance strong
The substances made up of nanomaterial are strong and last longer. They are used in every sector may it be clothing or sports accessories, aircrafts or cosmetics, bandages or cement. The nanomaterials improve the bonding at atomic level making the material stronger than before. This is cheap also and one-time investment.
3. Nanomaterial in fuel industry
Nanomaterials have more surface area than normal material. More surface area means more contact. Due to this it increases the rate of reaction. As a result, when used as fuel, less fuel can supply more energy. This can change the fuel industry in a revolutionary way.
The nanomaterials find their application in almost every industry. That’s why this sector is being focused by developed as well as developing countries. The government is also investing in this sector.
Future of nanotechnology
There are widespread uses of nanotechnology. There are also some more terms coined like Pico-technology and Femto-technology. These 2 are thousand and million times smaller than Nano, respectively. Scientists are planning to build a programmable material using the nanotechnology.
The programmable material means the material which can be converted to anything we desire. That means you can get spoon from plate, mug from bucket, bicycle from motor cycle. You can say you have transformer like material. Yeah! This sounds like science fiction, but scientist have their theory how to do this. We should not forget that few decades ago internet seemed impossible, mobile phone so fast and small were once science fiction, there are many examples of the things that once were science fiction but has become reality today.
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| Altering atoms using natotechnology |
According to scientists, we need 3 basic ingredients to get the programmable material in action: -
a. Building material- the basic raw material from which other things can be prepared
b. Blueprint- this is the guide or plan, which would show the path to get the desired material
c. Tools and materials- to cut and join the atoms into desired shape and size
The basic idea is to alter the material at atomic level to make what we desire. This would need self-replicating nanobots to rearrange the atoms within an object and replicate them.
There are 3 major challenges in the path of execution: -
a. Self-replicating robots are extremely difficult to build. This is difficult at the macroscopic level too, so Nano level is extremely difficult.
b. If we get successful in building replicating robots then also there is a challenge, how to communicate and give instructions? Trillions of nanobots would be required to execute the task. Each of them needs to be instructed separately which is not possible as of today’s technology.
c. How to cut, rearrange and join the atoms? Nature took billions of years to do so.
Our body is a Nano factory which takes the raw materials and make desired things. The raw material is DNA and it is used to make rest of the things. From the DNA all the living things are made. Nature has mastered this technology billions of years ago what we are trying Is to replicate now. we need many more decades to study and do it successfully.
There is a Nano factory inside every female on earth that takes one form of material (Ex. food) and makes another thing (Ex. baby) from it. Every living being is a Nano factory in itself.
If this becomes reality, we would be able to make anything out of any other thing. This would be very helpful to mankind. This is real science fiction. This can be used in improving our defense system. We can make transformable weapons, suits and many more out of it just like the techs of Iron man.
Harmful effects of nanotechnology
The big negative impact of nanotechnology is that we actually don’t know what would be the consequences of allowing the nanobots and nanomedicine enter our body. There are many researches going on to find this out. This is one of the reasons why we are not that familiar with nanotechnology.
Some claims are that nanoparticles if inhaled can be more dangerous than the larger particles like dust. There can be many health hazards of nanomaterial. But we don’t know properly the safety risks it can offer.
No doubt nanotechnology if becomes successful, can be very helpful to mankind. If the claims are true with minimal side effects then our world can be completely different with the use of nanotechnology. Fingers crossed, I wish everything goes well. Tell me in the comments below what are your thoughts on nanotechnology?
This is a big topic ..... My motive was to give the idea about the topic in brief.
This is sick!😍🔥
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