The safety of nanotechnology, the science of “engineering systems at a molecular scale”, has been paid little attention until recently, as more and more applications for the technology are being found. The main focus is on the safety of nanomedicine, the application of nanotechnology to the field of medicine. The concern is that materials behave differently on a tiny scale than they do at the size we normally use them. For example, gold can become a liquid at room temperature, copper becomes transparent, and silicon gains the ability to conduct electricity. Gold is used in nanomedicine to produce “nanoshells”, which can be used to improve diagnosis and imaging techniques, as well as having the capability to destroy damaged tissue when heated. However, there is no need to worry, because nanomedicine is closely regulated and rigorously tested before any application makes it into mainstream use. Most other uses of nanotechnology are widely regarded as completely safe. Once the nanomaterials that are used to make enhanced tennis racquets are in the product, they stay in the product and cause no harm to the user or the environment. However, the concern is that the manufacture of these products can harm us and the planet, as free nanoparticles are thought to cause damage to fish and also humans, as they get stuck in the lungs, similar to asbestos. So yes, there are some risks to nanotechnology, but there are also great benefits, and as the industry grows, safety procedures will become stronger and stronger. Some companies are already pushing to develop a safety standard for these products, and it is thought that a collaborative effort between such companies will produce a mechanism that makes it perfectly safe to manufacture and use products based on nanotechnology.

Spintronics, or “spin electronics”, is the study of the role of spin of electrons in solid state electronics. Solid state devices are based entirely on semiconductors, such as transistors and microprocessors, and contain no moving parts. The field of spintronics was established in the 1980s, following a number of experiments on electron transport in solid state devices. Some of the basic advantages of employing spintronics in new devices include increased processing speeds and decreased power consumption. The theory behind this growing field of research is based on the fact that electrons make up a system of two states, or “species”: “up” and “down”. To produce a spintronic device, you need a system that can generate a current of electrons made up of more of one spin state than the other. This system is known as the “spin injector”. A second system which is sensitive to the spin species of electrons receives information from the first system. This is known as the “spin detector”. Currently, computer hard drives are one of the main applications of the technology, and “solid state drives” are becoming larger and more popular. An exciting idea that is currently under research by Motorola is the development of non-volatile memory, which could be used in a computer to remember the state it was in when it is switched off. You would be able to turn on your PC in the morning and it would automatically load up everything you were working on when you turned it off the night before. As the possibilities of spintronic devices are still emerging, it will be several years before these products become commonplace, but expect to see some interesting developments in the near future.

The first person to talk about the concepts that we know today as “nanotechnology” was Richard Feynman, at his famous lecture, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, in December 1959. However, it would be almost 20 years before any nanotechnology devices came into production. In 1974, Norio Taniguchi of the Tokyo Science University first defined the term “nanotechnology”, and in the 1980s, Taniguchi’s work was much explored by Dr. Kim Eric Drexler, who wrote two books that are well known in the field: “Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology” and “Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation”. Drexler’s research gave the term “nanotechnology” the meaning it still has today. In 2000, the United States government set up the United States National Nanotechnology Initiative to coordinate nanotechnology research and development. In the UK, the leading authority in this field is the Institute of Nanotechnology, which was founded in 1997 and focuses on educating and training others in nanotechnology applications. Today, there are many companies involved with nanotechnology, in various different industries. In the electronics industry, Intel is working on circuits with nano-sized features and Kodak is developing LED displays that use nanotechnology. In the food industry, a company called Aqua Nova is researching ways of using nanoparticles to deliver vitamins and other nutrients in food and drink without changing the flavour. Even the sports industry has people working on harnessing nanotechnology to improve sporting equipment. Wilson is developing racquet frames that contain nanoparticles to improve the strength and stability, and NanoDynamics is working on new golf balls which will be easier to hit further. As this is still a fairly young area of technology, expect to witness huge leaps in science over the coming years, most likely made by companies in the computing industry, where nanotechnology is expected to make the biggest difference.

There are already a huge number of products on the market that make use of nanotechnology, the science of “engineering systems at a molecular scale”. Some uses of this technology appear in what are likely to be the products you would least expect! For example, the sports industry has made wide use of nanotechnology by developing advanced golf balls that fly in a straighter line, tennis balls and racquets that are stronger and last longer, and bowling balls that are harder. All of these examples make use of nanomaterials to improve their performance. In the clothing industry, someone has developed a pair of trousers that repels water! Perhaps a more common example is a DVD. The standard DVDs that you have at home have been using nanotechnology for years. If you magnified the surface of a DVD millions of times, it would appear to be covered in raised bumps. Each of these bumps is where the information of the disc is actually stored, and each one is only 320 nanometres across! Other areas where you might expect to see nanotechnology include the mobile phone and computer industries. Consider the difference between old arcade games that took up so much space and the new, next generation games consoles. Computers of the size we know today would not be possible without the use of nanotechnology. Some other nanotech products include teeth whitening toothpaste, lip gloss with sun protection without having the consistency of standard sun-screen, household wall paint that resists mould and razors that take much longer to go blunt. Scratch resistant glass has recently become available and is being used mainly in sunglasses. Cosmetics such as moisturising face cream uses nanotechnology to make skin appear smoother.

According to the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, “nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale”. The idea is that we should soon be able to manipulate individual atoms and molecules to construct devices that are more powerful, more precise, lighter and stronger. These days, the term “nanotechnology” has become much more popular and is often used to describe any type of manufacturing or research that takes place at dimensions less than 1000 nanometres. There are three main aims of devices manufactured using nanotechnology. Firstly, we should be able to place every atom in exactly the right place. Second, we should be able to build anything that complies with the laws of physics, as long as we can understand it at a molecular or atomic level. Finally, and perhaps the one that drives most research in this field, is the idea that the costs of manufacture should not be much higher than the costs of only the materials and energy required to put the product together. There are two important concepts related to nanotechnology that are necessary if we are going to achieve the three aims mentioned above. The first is known as “positional assembly”, which is how we would get all of the molecules or atoms in the right place. This can be achieved through the use of tiny robots, molecular in size and produced using nanotechnology themselves. The second concept is “massive parallelism”, which is a way to reduce the costs of manufacturing. Because one molecule-sized robot is going to take a very long time to build anything of substantial size, the idea is to have many robots that work in a production line, getting larger at each stage until the process is completed. Nanotechnology is an exciting field of research that is expected to see a huge amount of growth in coming years.

When materials are reduced to a very small scale, like the size of a few molecules or atoms, their properties can change drastically. The reason for this is the fact that the surface area to volume ration of the material at a tiny scale is much greater than it is at a larger scale. Some interesting examples of the changes that can occur are gold, which becomes a liquid at room temperature, copper, which becomes transparent, and silicon, which gains the ability to conduct electricity. The production of these materials is one of the main avenues of research in the field of nanotechnology. One method of production is known as “self assembly”, in which the atoms and molecules simply arrange themselves in the correct places, because of their natural properties!

Currently, nanomaterials are used as extremely thin coatings on various items, such as circuit boards, to enhance conduction of electricity, or even on panes of glass, to make them self-cleaning! An application of this technology currently under active research, is to increase the strength of conventional products. At a nanometre level, “softer” metals such as nickel can become as strong as hardened steel at a larger scale.

Nanomaterials can be categorised into “fullerenes” and “nanoparticles”. Fullerenes are made of carbon, and are thought to have important properties that could be used to produce more powerful antibiotics which may be able to tackle some forms of cancer. A nanoparticle is a “small object [1-100 nanometres] that behaves as a whole unit”. As mentioned previously, the properties of many materials change at this scale, so most nanoparticles exhibit interesting differences to their larger scale equivalents. These differences are not always desirable. For example, magnetic materials used to store information in computers can “flip” their magnetic field, making them lose any information stored on them.

Applications and uses of nanomedicine

Nanomedicine is when nanotechnology, the science of things smaller than 1000 nanometres in size, is applied to the field of medicine. There are a wide variety of uses in this area, ranging from the use of biosensors for detection of anomalies in the body, such as high blood sugar concentration, which would suggest diabetes, to the concept of nanorobots, developed using molecular nanotechnology. Currently, nanomedicine has applications in:

• Drug delivery systems – as drugs get smaller, they will be able to easily “sneak” past the body’s defence mechanisms and will be able to reach places that the drugs available today cannot. Because smaller compounds have a large surface area to volume ratio, these new drugs should also be more reactive.

• Disease detection – tiny nanoparticles known as “quantum dots” can be made to give off different colours depending on their size. They can also be made to attach to different biological components, such as certain proteins in certain colours, making it much easier to analyse blood for specific components.

• Destruction of diseased tissues – this technology makes use of nanoshells, microscopic balls of glass coated in gold. Nanoshells can also be designed to bind to specific components in the body, and can then be heated by lasers to destroy damaged tissue without causing any more damage to skin or other close by tissue.

• Drug discovery – pharmaceutical companies have started using nanotechnologies to develop genetically targeted drugs. This allows for much more precise drug development, and makes it faster to decide whether or not a substance is suitable for use in a drug.

These are just some of the many applications that nanomedicine already has, and it is certain that many more uses will come to light over the next few years. It has already been said that the successful development of a medical nanorobot would “change the world of medicine forever”.