A Brief Tour of the Nanoworld
by
Lauren Van Arsdale
Isn’t nanoscience science fiction?
How would you like to be able to change your hair color whenever you feel like it or never have to worry about brushing your teeth because they repair themselves? Or what about replacing that big desktop computer with a computer with a hard drive 100 times smaller? Or what about a computer containing “qubits” that could “think” multiple thoughts at once? And, what if this same technology could deliver drugs to cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed?
Think these ideas sound like a passage from a science fiction book or maybe a new show on the sci-fi channel? There was a time, not too long ago, when ideas like these were only in the realm of science fiction, but guess what? As you read this article, real scientists are working on experiments in a microscopic area of science that could one day make these ideas a reality.
Meet: Nanoscience
So, you know that science involves experiments, investigations and discovery of many things, some of which we can see, and many of which we cannot. But, of the many things we cannot see without some type of microscope, have you ever considered that scientists can work with a class of objects one billionth of a meter in size? This is nanoscience. Nanoscience is a very new branch of science that works ‘at the nanoscale,’ that is; it is a branch of science that works with objects that are one billionth of a meter in size.
The smallest object you have probably studied is the atom. Remember that the electron is the part of the atom that orbits the nucleus. Between three and six atoms make up one nanometer. For example, on this scale of atoms and molecules, one molecule of a carrot, Beta Carotene, is 3 nanometers in size.
But how is it possible to imagine an object one billionth of a meter in size? Dr. Sergio Ulloa, Professor of Physics at Ohio University uses an analogy with three very small, familiar objects, a snowflake, a bug and a speck of dust: You can begin by picturing a snowflake, which is 1/8 of an inch. On that snowflake there could be a type of bug, called a dust mite, 1/50 of an inch in size, crawling around the edges. Next imagine a speck of dust on the dust mite’s shoulder. Finally, break that dust particle into one thousand pieces and imagine one of those pieces. Wow, pretty small, right? You can also think about one strand of your hair. The objects that nanoscientists are working with are no larger than 50,000 times smaller than the width of that piece of hair. Small.
But what’s so great about the small size?
When it is possible to get inside an object, down to the smallest objects it is made of, it is possible to change what the object is capable of doing. In order to control what a visible object does you have to be able to control what it is made up of. The building blocks of matter, atoms, are objects that cannot be seen with the human eye and therefore cannot be controlled. Atoms can be can be manipulated with very powerful microscopes such as the atomic force microscope (ATM), the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) or the magnetic force microscope (MFM). The particles, made up of atoms, that make up a visible object look and act differently at the nanoscale. Because there is this difference between an object’s properties at the nanoscale, scientists are able to create products with improved functions. Coatings or films can be engineered at the nanoscale to create water repellant windshields, anti-fog glasses, refrigerators that keep food longer (the coating on the inside kills bacteria) as well as scratch resistant and nonstick products. In biological areas of nanoscience research, molecules can be constructed that are almost identical to natural molecules.
Ok that’s cool. So what do nanoscientists DO?
Besides the incredibly small size of the objects, another exciting part of this new branch of science is that it involves the efforts of many types of scientists. Chemists, biologists, doctors, physicists, engineers as well as computer scientists are all involved. How can one branch of science encompass so many jobs? Dr. Hla, Assistant Professor of Physics at Ohio University is a good example. He is a physicist by title but that includes working in the field of nanoscience. “My research is very diverse. I’m working on nanobiotechnology which is partially related with nanomedicines,” he says. “How can I work with so many different areas when I’m a physicist?” Nanoscience is different from other branches of science in that it incorporates many of the other branches in order to perform research. For example: “Nanoscience deals with objects one billionth of a meter or one million times smaller than an inch. That’s a scale of atoms and molecules. The entire subject of chemistry deals with molecules, and molecules are built by atoms, so chemistry is interconnected with nanoscience. Also, physics works with a very wide rage of objects, from the very small objects of nuclear physics, to particle physics, as well as the very large scale objects in astrophysics,” explains Hla. Professor Hla is also involved in electronics research to reduce the size of computer hard drives.
So where do scientists begin in order to one day produce a computer hard drive that would be 100 times smaller than the hard drives of today? In nanoscience, as in other scientific disciplines, there are different areas of research. Nanospintronics and nanomagnetics are two areas of nanoscience where research is being done in order to one day produce this incredibly small computer hard drive. Using current technology there are 150,000 atoms in one bit of computer memory. In order to reduce the amount of atoms needed to make up one bit, scientists are studying an atomic property that results from the spin of an electron in the area of nanospintronics. The spin property of an electron is important because an electron is a fundamental particle, which means it cannot be broken down in to any other objects. The spin of an electron is the basis of the magnetic bits on a computer hard drive.
Now that you have a basic understanding of nanoscience and its possibilities, check out the other Spintorial articles for specific studies and research being done in the exciting world of nanoscience!
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