Nanomaterials are defined as materials with dimensions ranging from 1-100 nanometers, including both naturally occurring and engineered nanoparticles. They hold potential for various applications, such as targeted cancer treatment, advanced drug delivery mechanisms, medical imaging, and energy efficiency improvements. Researchers are exploring nanotechnology's capabilities in fields like information storage, sensing devices, and creating new types of super-strong metamaterials.

2. BY
SAURABH DWIVEDI
‘U’ SECTION
ROLL NO. 08

3. Nano materials are defined as materials with at least one
external dimension in the size range from approximately
1-100 nanometers.
Nano Particles
Naturally
Occurring
Nano Particles
Engineered
Nano Particles

4.  Nano particles that are naturally occurring (e.g.,
volcanic ash, soot from forest fires) or are the
incidental byproducts of combustion processes
(e.g., welding, diesel engines) are usually
physically and chemically heterogeneous and
often termed ultrafine particles.

5.  Engineered Nano particles may be bought from
commercial vendors or generated via experimental
procedures by researchers in the laboratory.
 Examples of engineered Nano materials include: carbon
buckeyballs or fullerenes; carbon nanotubes; metal or
metal oxide nanoparticles (e.g., gold, titanium dioxide);
quantum dots, among many others.

6.  It is a million times smaller than the length of
an ant.
 A sheet of paper is about 100,000
nanometers thick.
 A red blood cell is about 7,000-8,000
nanometers in diameter.
 A strand of DNA is 2.5 nanometers in
diameter.
 The ratio of the Earth to a child’s marble is
roughly the ratio of a meter to a nanometer.

8.  Cancer Treatment: Identifying and destroying cancer
cells more accurately and effectively.
 Drug Delivery Mechanisms: Targeted drug delivery
mechanisms for disease control and prevention.
 Medical Imaging: Creating nanoparticles that gather in
certain tissues and then scanning the body with a
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could help highlight
problems such as diabetes.

9.  New Sensing Devices: With near limitless customizable
sensing properties, nanorobotics would unlock new
sensing capabilities we can integrate into our systems
to monitor and measure the world around us.
 Information Storage Devices: A bioengineer and
geneticist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have successfully
stored 5.5 petabits of data — around 700 terabytes —
in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA
data density record by a thousand times.

10.  New Energy Systems: Nanorobotics might play a role in
developing more efficient renewable energy system. Or
they could make our current machines more energy
efficient such that they’d need less energy to operate at
the same or high capacities.
 Super-strong Metamaterials: There is lots of research
going into these metamaterials. A team out of Caltech
developed a new type of material, made up of
nanoscale struts crisscrossed like the struts of a tiny
Eiffel Tower, that is one of the strongest and lightest
substances ever made.

11.  Replicators: Also known as a “Molecular Assembler,”
this is a proposed device able to guide chemical
reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic
precision.
 Health Sensors: These sensors could monitor our blood
chemistry, notify us when something is out of whack,
detect spoiled food or inflammation in the body, and
more.
 Connecting Our Brains to the Internet: Ray Kurzweil
believes nanorobots will allow us to connect our
biological nervous system to the cloud by 2030.

13.  A team of German physicists has just created the world's
smallest working engine.
 Powered by a single electrically-charged calcium atom, the
new device is claimed to have the equivalent
thermodynamic efficiency (if scaled to size) of an average
automobile engine.
 Basically a heat-exchange engine, its single-atom acts as
both fuel and power plant and is heated by electrical noise
and cooled by laser beam.
 The Scientists who are behind the invention don’t have a
particular use in mind for the engine.
 But it’s a good illustration of how we are increasingly able to
replicate the everyday machines we rely on at a tiny scale.

15.  An international team of researchers has developed
miniscule, self-propelled devices that mimic the way
cells move.
 These “nanoswimmers” cross the blood–brain barrier
highly efficiently, and could lead to the development of
drug delivery systems that navigate through tissues and
organs to target specific sites precisely.

17.  “Several groups of researchers have recently
constructed a high-speed, remote-controlled nanoscale
version of a rocket by combining nanoparticles with
biological molecules.
 The researchers hope to develop the rocket so it can be
used in any environment; for example, to deliver drugs
to a target area of the body.”

19.  Drexel University engineers have developed a method
for using electric fields to help microscopic bacteria-
powered robots detect obstacles in their environment
and navigate around them.
 Uses include delivering medication, manipulating stem
cells to direct their growth, or building a
microstructure, etc.

22. Nanotechnology has the
potential to solve some of
the biggest problems that
the world faces today.