NANOTECHNOLOGY FOR FUTURE

The naive and direct answer to the frequently posed question “what

exactly is Nanotechnology?” is to say that it is a technology

concerning processes which are relevant to physics, chemistry and

biology taking place at a length scale of one divided by 100 million of

a metre. Maybe a little bit more enlightening although equally naive is

to say that nanotechnology is the art of producing little devices and

machines, somewhat at the molecular scale . However the

scientific definition which I admit may be slightly involved for a non-

specialized person is to say that nanotechnology is a technology

applied in the grey area between classical mechanics and quantum

mechanics.

Classical mechanics is the mechanics governing the motion of

all the objects we can see with our naked eye. This is a mechanics

which obeys deterministic laws and which we can control to a very

far extent. For example, falling of an apple; if we know the height

from which the apple fell, we can find the time after which it will

reach the ground and also the speed at that very time. By contrast,

quantum mechanics which is the mechanics controlling the motion of

things like the electron, the proton, the neutron and the like is

completely probabilistic. We know nothing about the motion of the

electron except that there is a probability that the electron may be here

or there. Even crazier than this, if we know the exact location of an

electron, it is impossible to know its speed, and if we know the exact

speed of the electron it is impossible to know its exact location. This

is well stated as the ‘Heisenberg uncertainty principle’. The question

then which poses itself is ‘when does a classical object like an apple

or so changes its nature to a quantum object like an electron?’

Somewhere between these two scales these changes happen, but this

does not happen suddenly. There is a grey area between these two

scales which is neither classical nor quantum. Theoretical physicists

call it the mesoscopic system . This is what is called by non-

physicists the nanoworld. A nanosystem is therefore something which

is sufficiently small that we could not see with our naked eye and not

6even with an ordinary microscope. However it is sufficiently

larger than an electron so that we can control it in principle if we have

a very fine tool to manipulate the system.

Approaching nanotechnology from another point of view,

namely that of industrial production, we can say that the majority of

our industrial products are so far bulk industry or bulk production. To

produce a wooden chair, we take a large trunk of a tree and cut it

down to smaller sizes and fit these pieces together until we produce a

chair. However nature operates in a very different way. To produce

the trunk of a tree, nature grows a tree. It starts with a very small seed.

This seed has all the information needed to grow a tree. In

nanotechnology, we are trying partially to imitate nature and to build

things starting with atoms. So we have moved now from the

traditional bulk industry which is wasteful and accompanied by a

great deal of pollution to the atomic scale industry which we call

nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology has immense potential. In fact, nanotechnology

discoveries are currently causing a domino effect of innovation across

nearly every science and engineering field. As more and more

technologists learn the fundamentals of nanotechnology, and more

unusual nanoscale properties are understood, more powerful uses are

being imagined. Perhaps the most globally exciting nano application

is in the area of energy. Humanity’s future prosperity and energy

availability, as well as the quality of the global environment, is the

most important area that will be affected by nano applications.

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