An Overview
By
V.Krishna Moorthy & Bhaskar Karnick

01. The Prologue 02. Preface 03. Nano- An Introduction 04. Nano-definition 05. Nano-Basics 06. Nano-Tools 07. Biomimetic System 08. Biomimetic Machinery 09. Common Structures used in Nanotechnology 10. Nano-devices for Human Bodies (The Living Machines) 11. Nono-Manufacturing Process 12. The Practical applications at a Glance 13. A guide to become Nano-technologistogist 14. Reference Links

The Prologue

Devas went on a holiday; on their return they found human young and old alike spend most of their time in front of a box, they themselves calling it idiot box. The devas become too curious. They went to Brahma, the creator and asked him, how this human creation viz. Television functions. Brahma said that he has no time to waste on such stupid studies, it would be more appropriate to take Viswakarma, who understands the Earthlings better.

Brahma advised them, that the study should follow in the same lines as human understand the nature calling it - Scientific Research/ Studies/ Inventions.

 

Vishwakarma accompanied them and looked at various versions of the Idiot Box. He felt that the study can be successful only if the same human approach is adopted in understanding its function, as suggested by Brahma. He has called out for books on Human Physiology, Neurology, few books on Physics and chemistry. Viswankarma worked out the exact procedure following the state-of-the art viz. Science and Technology of the Earthlings.

Devas you see, the major difference, is the script written on these boxes (the Brand names). Let us remove them and see what happens. The Brand names have been pulled out. The TVs worked still the same way as before. The outer Boxes enclosing the mechanism itself has been removed the TVs worked still without losing the quality of performance. The very fuses have been removed, alas, the TVs stopped working. Following the same pattern as human, Viswakarma declared that the Fuse is the major part of a TV that makes it work. Viswakarma figured out the TV functions based on the fuse design and suggested a method to maintain these equipments and repair them on its failure. His conculsion is that the electrical power passed through TV makes not only the equipment work but also protects it. The have to have a right rating. Our heart beat has to be around 80, Sugar at 90 mg, pressure 120-80 - If universal figures do not match bring them to the predefined table values !! To crudely put it - such is the human approach towards - the human biology, the neurology and the very understanding of how our body and the brain works.

But here comes a new subject the Nano-science - the technology that goes to very depth of nature. In the world of Nano-science the study of physics, chemistry and other basic science take different shapes - man goes more nearer to the creator in his understanding of nature.

Preface

Lately there are frequent news about the new findings in Nanotechnology. There seems to be a race going on between various international labs and intense research is being carried out in the area of this new science. Enormous emphasis is being placed on Nanotechnology and many researchers are looking towards Nanotechnology, to find answers, in many areas specially medicine and electronics. Nano-science and Nanotechnology seem to be the best of the solution provider today.

21^st century belongs to Gene technology and Nanotechnology.

It would not be out of place to mention that Nanotechnology has been introduced as a subject in some of the developed countries, as they see the future of S & T will be in Nano-based approach.

In India, the importance of Nanotechnology came to lime light quite recently. While the authors have been carrying out the desk research on Nano Technology for a technical writeup, it became quite clear, that the next wave of technology after the computers and management - is the Nanotechnology. There may be few institutions in India doing serious research in the Nano field, but one does not hear of the exact nature of research work being done. Awareness in student community about this emerging technology would help in attracting more talent.

It is high time to wake up and start serious work on Nanotechnology and educational activity to keep up with the advance countries. It is also presumed that Nanotechnology would touch every other sphere of technical activities and make the current technologies look like bullock cart of 18th Century.

An attempt is being made here to introduction the subject in a simple thought proving manner and the right perspective. This approach may kindle/simulate the interest in many individuals and students to look at the subject more seriously.

Nano- An Introduction

Man himself is a nature machine equipped with complex tools like limbs and the five senses. Man with these limited, but versatile tools has build many structures like building, cities, Dams and developed thousands of other resources for his own benefit and is controlling these resources as his personal property. One can go on beyond the current day science to keep civil Engineering based building technologies, with a conventional approach, but a deeper look at the nature which build the self reproducing and learning machines from much smaller structures that is to say with fewer groups of "Atoms and Molecules".

Man has been trying to study the natures smaller scale technology and has been progressively investigating smaller and smaller level of natures creation. The human cells, Smaller animals, microbes, bacteria, Virus, Fungi etc. As the science has been historically understood, It has been divided into very nearly neat division of Physics, Chemistry, Biology Etc. Nature while engaged in its creativity/construction activity never distinguishes different streams or rules of Science and technology.

What are we driving at? The Nanotechnology tries to mimic the nature and takes the man more nearer to the Creator by further few more steps.

A Success Story to drive home the point Led by Ghassan E. Jabbour, an associate professor of optical sciences, researchers at the University of Arizona are using ink jet printers to construct light-emitting signs and are planning to apply the same technique to the construction of computer monitors and electronic displays. The research could allow manufacturers to build displays on any sort of surface-even a flexible one-at very low cost. "We're trying to use ink jets to make photonic devices, including displays, much cheaper than you could make them using traditional techniques such as photolithographics and laser application," says Jabbour. "We can make signs just by patterning a digital picture on a computer, sending it to a printer, and printing it on a silicon wafer, a flexible substrate, or even a plastic bag." Because he's still waiting on a patent for the process, Jabbour can't reveal the specific substances he's using in the experiment, but basic techniques behind the process are fairly easy to understand. Once researchers have chosen a particular substrate for their light-emitting sign, Jabbour and his team cover the substrate with a polymer that serves as an electrode, connecting the would-be sign to a battery. Then, using an everyday graphics application, they fashion a digital image using a PC attached to their ink jet printer. The Arizona team has emptied the ink cartridges and filled them with chemicals capable of changing the polymer's conductivity, and the researchers have engineered a few other mechanisms, so the ink jet can print onto the substrate. This is the crux of the technique.  The team chemically prints the digital image onto the substrate just as you'd print an ink image onto a piece of paper. The polymer is then covered with a layer of light-emitting material Such as phosphor or liquid crystal. Then the light-emitting layer is covered with a metal layer that connects to a battery's negative node. When powered, the polymer excites the light-emitting material, but only where the chemicals were applied by the printer. Suddenly, there is a photonic sign that looks just like the original digital image.

Nano science and technologies are likely to touch every aspect of our life in the next few years. Many Big names are investing Billions of Dollars to explore and research out in this direction. Like computer technology this technology also does not require a lot of investment but knowledge Engineering (Brain power) and hard work. This aspect of nanotechnology gives a definite leverage to India - a country with large Brain power.

Applications of Nanotechnology ranges from - reducing the size of electronic gadgets (Bell Labs has already come out with a self assembled Transistors of single molecule size ) to designing virus to kill bacteria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nano-Definition

There is no accepted definition of Nanotechnology or Nano science. Nanotechnology refers to components build of the size 20 to 30 Nano Meters. They are also supposed to be self replicating or self assembling and this aspect get confused with cloning. Self-assembling implies, you put the ingredients in one place and they assemble into some thing useful where as replicating implies, You have a assembled component and it replicates it self in to thousands of more like itself. Cloning refers to meddling with nature at reproductive level of animals including human. Self replicating or self assembling does not refer to living being but manipulation done on organic and inorganic materials at molecular level. This separation between living and nonliving gets blurred at nano level. Any way whether self assembling or self replicating once the process is on, little effort is required externally to manufacture them. The cost benefit can be immediately sensed.

"Nano Technology" in the broader and more inclusive definition is referred as molecular nanotechnology" or "molecular manufacturing."

Nanotechnology, while not providing a cure for everything, is defined by the length scale when scientists and engineers discover new phenomena. It provides exquisite new tools to engineer novel materials and devices at the nanoscale, and to study biology. A nanometer, one billionth of a meter, is about 10,000 times narrower than a human hair. Major technological revolutions, including the industrial revolution and the dawn of the information era, have revealed how new discoveries can drastically change our lives. There is no doubt that rapid technological transformations require new paradigms of how to educate the next generation of leaders in academia and industry. By virtue of their interdisciplinary nature, rapid advances in nanoscale science and technology can only thrive in a collaborative environment in which faculty and students from different disciplines discuss ideas, work together, and share their expertise.

To Sumup

Nanotechnology is a hybrid science combining engineering and chemistry. Atoms and molecules stick together because they have complementary shapes that lock together, or charges that attract. Just like with magnets, a positively charged atom will stick to a negatively charged atom. As millions of these atoms are pieced together by nanomachines, a specific product will begin to take shape. The goal of nanotechnology is to manipulate atoms individually and place them in a pattern to produce a desired structure.

There are three steps to achieving nanotechnology-produced goods:

Scientists must be able to manipulate individual atoms. This means that they will have to develop a technique to grab single atoms and move them to desired positions.

In 1990, IBM Researchers showed that it is possible to manipulate single atoms. They positioned 35 Xenon atoms on the surface of a nickel crystal, using an atomic force microscopy instrument. These positioned atoms spelled out the letters "IBM." The next step will be to develop nanoscopic machines, called assemblers, that can be programmed to manipulate atoms and molecules at will. It would take thousands of years for a single assembler to produce any kind of material one atom at a time. Trillions of assemblers will be needed to develop products in a viable time frame.

In order to create enough assemblers to build consumer goods, some nanomachines, called replicators, will be programmed to build more assemblers.

Bell Labs scientists create organic transistors with a single-molecule channel length

Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have created organic transistors with a single-molecule channel length, setting the stage for a new class of high-speed, inexpensive carbon-based electronics. In these new molecular-scale transistors, fabricated by a multidisciplinary team of Bell Labs researchers, the length of one molecule defines the channel's physical dimension; it is more than a factor of ten smaller than anything that has been demonstrated even with the most advanced lithography techniques. Scientists have been looking for alternatives to conventional silicon electronics for many years, because they anticipate that the continuing miniaturization of silicon-based integrated circuits will subside in approximately a decade as fundamental physical limits are reached. Some of this research has been aimed at producing molecular-scale transistors, in which single molecules are responsible for the transistor action - switching and amplifying electrical signals. Bell Labs scientists Hendrik Schon, Zhenan Bao and Hong Meng have now succeeded in fabricating molecular-scale transistors that rival conventional silicon transistors in performance, using a class of organic (carbon-based) semiconductor material known as thiols. "When we tested them, they behaved extremely well as both amplifiers and switches," said Schon, an experimental physicist who was the lead researcher.

Trillions of assemblers and replicators will fill an area smaller than a cubic millimeter, and will still be too small for us to see with the naked eye. Assemblers and replicators will work together like hands to automatically construct products, and will eventually replace all traditional labor methods. This will vastly decrease manufacturing costs, thereby making consumer goods plentiful, cheaper and stronger. In the next section, you'll find out how nanotechnology will impact every facet of society, from medicine to computers.

Nanotechnology plays by different rules

Much of todays Nano scale research is designed to reach a better understanding of how matter behaves on this small scale. The factors that govern larger systems do not necessarily apply on the Nano scale. Because Nano materials have large surface areas relative to their volumes, phenomena like friction and sticking are more important than they are in larger systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nano-Basics

Nanotechnology in Nature

Living organisms are examples of Natures handy work of Nanotechnology, many natural molecular machines systems display enormous abilities. Molecular machinery in green plants converts more energy and synthesizes a greater tonnage of organic compounds than a chemical industry, and does it job so cleanly using cheap raw materials picked up by itself. The storage capacity of genome in few bacteria may far exceed that in any large computer systems of today. Nature places far denser systems in the same volume free of charge (no-technical sophistication and resources spent up).

Natural molecular machinery has outperformed anything we now know, how to build. There is lot to learn from nature about building molecular machines of our own design, aiming to make a wider range of products, including computer components that we can actually put to use.

Molecular machine systems

Photo courtesy NASA, Ames Nanogears no more than a nanometer wide could be used to construct a matter compiler, which could be fed raw material to arrange atoms and build a macro-scale structure.

If something has moving parts and does useful work, we call it a machine. If something is nanometers in scale and has a precise arrangement of bonded atoms, we call it a molecule, or a molecular assembly. If something matches both these descriptions, we can properly call it a molecular machine; if it comprises many parts, each worthy of the name 'machine', it may be better described as molecular machine system.

Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. Viewed from the molecular level today's macroscopic manufacturing methods are crude and imprecise. Casting, milling, welding and all the other traditional manufacturing methods spray atoms about in great statistical herds. Even lithography (which already lets us put millions of transistors on a chip no bigger than your fingernail) is fundamentally statistical and random. Exactly how many dopant atoms are in a single transistor and exactly where each individual dopant atom is located is neither specified nor known: if we have roughly the right number in roughly the right place, we can make a working transistor. For today, that is good enough.

The exception is chemistry. Large high purity crystals can have almost every atom in the right place. So, too, can many long polymers. The structures of proteins with hundreds and even thousands of amino acids can be specified down to the last atom. Most dramatically (and fortunately for us!) DNA strands with many tens of millions of bases can be copied with almost perfect accuracy. And it seems that almost any small molecule (with perhaps several dozens of atoms) can be synthesized, if only we have the skill and patience.

Such descriptions don't define sharp boundaries. Although it seems hard not to view the bacterial flagellar motor

as a molecular machine, somewhere on the path towards simplicity -- from ribosome to enzyme, organ metallic catalyst, or solvated ion - the term 'machine' loses its utility.

A straightforward analysis based on well-established physical principles shows that these advanced devices can process matter, energy, and information precisely, efficiently, and with high productivity. Theoretical studies have explored synthetic strategies for such structures, guiding reactions by atomically precise positioning of highly reactive species. These synthetic strategies, however, themselves rely on preexisting molecular machinery to do the positioning

Concrete progress in Nanotechnology can be achieved from the existing conventional technologies. Since the most attractive approaches involve solvated, self-assembled systems of folded macromolecules, it should come as no surprise that biotechnology and allied fields are well positioned to exploit them at the earliest possible opportunity.

Elaboration of this principle in more difficult directions has led to the design and synthesis of branched, three-dimensional structures, including a cube-like framework containing eight Y junctions, and a growing range of successors. This work indicates that nucleic acids can be engineered to serve as scaffolding for complex molecular systems.

Nano-Tools

For constructing any machine we require suitable tools to old and place the component in the precise location. The complexity of the tool increases as the size of the component decreases. Imagine a building a component consisting of few molecules - What tools can be used, how they would look like? And How to use them? Development of the right tools for Nanotechnology itself should be a interesting issue.

Regardless of whether specifically biological molecules remain the preferred choice for implementing design concepts, ongoing advances in tools for biotechnology will boost molecular machine research. The growth of combinatorial chemistry has strengthened the drive toward high-throughput, automated systems for chemical synthesis and analysis. Improved microfluidic systems -- 'labs on a chip' -- will make experiments faster and cheaper, expanding the utility of trial and error in overcoming limited predictive knowledge and design methods. Micromechanical systems in the form of scanning probe microscopes now enable direct visualization and manipulation of individual macromolecules.

Biomimetic system

Nature chiefly relies on proteins and nucleic acids for molecular machine components, but evolution has responded to different incentives that differ from ours, and been locked into the same basic chemistry for billions of years. By learning from nature and then applying the tools of organic synthesis to realize quite different designs, we can gain still more freedom to avoid problems and implement solutions.

Biomimetic machinery

With computational modeling to aid rational design, and faster, cheaper cycles of synthesis and analysis to correct mistakes, it seems that emerging technologies will eventually enable the routine fabrication of diverse macromolecular objects comparable in function to proteins. Since proteins in nature form molecular machine systems, it seems worth considering what analogous systems could do for us.

Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal we can make diamond. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a few other trace elements) we can make computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt, water and air we can make potatoes.

Todays manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level. Casting, grinding, milling and even lithography move atoms in great thundering statistical herds.

In the future, It will be possible to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature easily, inexpensively and in most of the ways permitted by the laws of physics. This will be essential if we are to continue the revolution in computer hardware beyond the next decade, and will also let us fabricate an entire new generation of products that are cleaner, stronger, lighter, and more precise.

It's worth pointing out that the word "nanotechnology" has become very popular and is used to describe many types of research where the characteristic dimensions are less than about 1,000 nanometers. For example, continued improvements in lithography have resulted in line widths that are less than one micron: this work is often called "nanotechnology." Sub-micron lithography is clearly very valuable in electronics

Common Structures used in Nanotechnology

Nanotube are the most common structures used in Nano technology. Nanotubes are made of carbon atoms bonded into honeycomb-like shapes with enormous strength and electrical conductivity.

Recently another structure made of different oxides is Nano belt. Nano belt manufacturing seems to be simpler and produces belts which are longer than Nanotubes.

Nanopores is another structure the pores are so small that DNA separation is being attempted using this structure.

Quantum dots are minuscule molecule making up tiny crystals that glow when stimulated by ultraviolet light.

Nanoshells are miniscule beads coated with gold.

Dendrimers are man-made molecules about the size of an average protein, and have a branching shape

As the research in the field progress, more structures would be identified.

Nano-devices for Human Bodies (The Living Machines)

Challenges apply specifically to the use of nanostructures within biological systems. Nanostructures can be so small that the body may clear them too rapidly for them to be effective in detection or imaging. Larger nano particles may accumulate in vital organs, creating a toxicity problem. Scientists will need to consider these factors as they attempt to create Nano devices the body will accept.

Nono-Manufacturing Process

There are two basic approaches for creating Nano devices. Scientists refer to these methods as the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach involves molding or etching materials into smaller components. This approach has traditionally been used in making parts for computers and electronics. The bottom-up approach involves assembling structures atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule, and may prove useful in manufacturing devices used in medicine.

Practical Applications at a Glance

Monitoring Patients:

Most animal cells are 10,000 to 20,000 nanometers in diameter. This means that nanoscale devices (less than 100 nanometers) can enter cells and interact with DNA and proteins. Tools developed through nanotechnology may be able to detect disease in a very small samples of cells or tissue. They could be made to enter and monitor cells within a living body.

In order to successfully detect cancer at its earliest stages, scientists must be able to detect molecular changes even when they occur only in a small percentage of cells. This means the necessary tools must be extremely sensitive. The potential for nanostructures to enter and analyze single cells suggests they could meet this need.

Components or tools built with nanotechnology could travel in the body and transmit or take corrective action to repair an organ of body very effectively without disturbing the healthy cells. The application in the medical field is limited only by imagination.

Electronics

Using Nanotechnology electronic component size would shrink along with the cost. It means complex appliances like computer, Cell phone etc would be like throw away items. Manu complex devices may be merged to offer multi utility in a single small package.

Automobile

The changes in electronics and other field due to nanotechnology would possibly make the automobile run on fuel assembled from Nanotechnology. The engine may be running in some other way not comprehendible today.

Possible use of Nano structure

Nanopores

Another interesting nanodevice is the nanopore. Improved methods of reading the genetic code will help researchers detect errors in genes that may contribute to cancer. Scientists believe Nanopores, tiny holes that allow DNA to pass through one strand at a time, will make DNA sequencing more efficient. As DNA passes through a nanopore, scientists can monitor the shape and electrical properties of each base, or letter, on the strand. Because these properties are unique for each of the four bases that make up the genetic code, scientists can use the passage of DNA through a nanopore to decipher the encoded information, including errors in the code known to be associated with cancer.

Nanotubes:

Nanotubes is another nanodevice that will help identify DNA changes associated with cancer is the nanotube. Nanotubes are carbon rods about half the diameter of a molecule of DNA that not only can detect the presence of altered genes, but may help researchers pinpoint the exact location of those changes.

To prepare DNA for nanotube analysis, scientists must attach a bulky molecule to regions of the DNA that are associated with cancer. They can design tags that seek out specific mutations in the DNA and bind to them.

Quantum dots

Another minuscule molecule that will be used to detect cancer is a quantum dot. Quantum dots are tiny crystals that glow when they are stimulated by ultraviolet light. The wavelength, or color, of the light depends on the size of the crystal. Latex beads filled with these crystals can be designed to bind to specific DNA sequences. By combining different sized quantum dots within a single bead, scientists can create probes that release distinct colors and intensities of light. When the crystals are stimulated by UV light, each bead emits light that serves as a sort of spectral bar code, identifying a particular region of DNA.

Quantum dots can find cancer signatures

To detect cancer, scientists can design quantum dots that bind to sequences of DNA that are associated with the disease. When the quantum dots are stimulated with light, they emit their unique bar codes, or labels, making the critical, cancer-associated DNA sequences visible.

The diversity of quantum dots will allow scientists to create many unique labels, which can identify numerous regions of DNA simultaneously. This will be important in the detection of cancer, which results from the accumulation of many different changes within a cell.

Another advantage to quantum dots is that they can be used in the body, eliminating the need for biopsy.

Improving cancer treatment

Nanotechnology may also be useful for developing ways to eradicate cancer cells without harming healthy, neighboring cells. Scientists hope to use nanotechnology to create therapeutic agents that target specific cells and deliver their toxin in a controlled, time-released manner.

Nanoshells

Nanoshells are miniscule beads coated with gold. By manipulating the thickness of the layers making up the nanoshells, scientists can design these beads to absorb specific wavelengths of light. The most useful nanoshells are those that absorb near-infrared light, which can easily penetrate several centimeters of human tissue. The absorption of light by the nanoshells creates an intense heat that is lethal to cells.

Nanoshells as cancer therapy

Researchers can already link nanoshells to antibodies that recognize cancer cells. Scientists envision letting these nanoshells seek out their cancerous targets, then applying near-infrared light. In laboratory cultures, the heat generated by the light-absorbing nanoshells has successfully killed tumor cells while leaving neighboring cells intact.

Dendrimers

Research is being done on a number of Nano particles created to facilitate drug delivery. One such molecule with potential to link treatment with detection and diagnosis is known as a dendrimer. Dendrimers are man-made molecules about the size of an average protein, and have a branching shape. This shape gives them vast amounts of surface area to which scientists can attach therapeutic agents or other biologically active molecules. Researchers aim eventually to create nanodevices that do much more than deliver treatment.

Dendrimers as cancer therapy

A single dendrimer can carry a molecule that recognizes cancer cells, a therapeutic agent to kill those cells, and a molecule that recognizes the signals of cell death. Researchers hope to manipulate dendrimers to release their contents only in the presence of certain trigger molecules associated with cancer. Following drug release, the dendrimers may also report back whether they are successfully killing their targets.

Nanotechnologies in patient care

Nanotechnologies that will aid in cancer care are in various stages of discovery and development. Experts believe that quantum dots, nanopores, and other devices for detection and diagnosis may be available for clinical use in five to 15 years. Therapeutic agents are expected to be available within a similar time frame. Devices that integrate detection and therapy could be used clinically in about 15 or 20 years.

Nanotech could affect medicine, industry, and the fabrication of just about everything you buy, because smaller is not just beautiful, but also cheaper, faster and less wasteful of energy.

Nanobelts may turn out to have advantages over tubes in terms of price, flexibility and practicality. For making Nanobelts oxide is evaporated for two hours, what the researchers called "white woollike products" appeared on a plate in a cooler part of the furnace. Using electron microscopes and X-ray diffraction, Wang and his crew analyzed that itty-bitty woolly stuff. Nanobelt is deposited as woollike product.

The oxide contained zinc, tin, cadmium, gallium or indium, the little straps have a rectangular cross-section, with a width of 30 to 300 nanometers and a thickness of 10 to 15 nanometers. Because the material is already an oxide, it does not undergo a chemical reaction, and has a pure, flawless surface.

More important, each belt was a single crystal. Flawlessness is a big advantage, says Wang, professor of material science and engineering and director of Georgia Technology's Center for Nano science and Nano technology. He attributes the lack of flaws to the minuscule size. "They are so small that no defect can stay in the volume, they just pop out."

While Nano tubes are generally only a few millionths of a meter long, the belts are millimeters long.

And while Nano tubes are made of pure carbon, belts have already been made from five oxides, a much greater variety for the engineer to play with. "The oxide world is so colorful, so fancy," says Wang, "but carbon is only carbon."

Nanodevices as a link between detection, diagnosis, and treatment

Researchers aim eventually to create nanodevices that do much more than deliver treatment. The goal is to create a single nanodevice that will do many things: assist in imaging inside the body, recognize precancerous or cancerous cells, release a drug that targets only those cells, and report back on the effectiveness of the treatment.

Sensors: the electrical conductivity of zinc oxide, for example, changes drastically when a gas molecule attaches, so zinc oxide is already used to detect flammable gases. Tiny sensors could replace existing ones, and find new uses as well.

Smart windows: These high-tech pieces of glass respond to temperature changes by, for example, restricting the flow of ultraviolet light. Tin oxide treated with fluoride is currently used for this purpose.

Flat-panel displays. Indium oxide doped with tin is transparent, but electrically conducting, making it a promising material for advanced displays.

Electronic and optical-electronic devices. The tested oxides are semiconductors and are the main members of the "smart and functional materials" family. Thus nanobelts could be used to make tiny devices for electronic or fiber-optics purposes.

The worlds economy is largely based on defense need of the countries. Huge amount is spent in procurement, development, manufacture and maintaining equipment. The lower price due to nanotechnology would reduce budget for defense, space exploration. Newer eco friendly material for building construction could provide more energy efficient and comfortable housing. Nano device could also help better and cheaper management of waste generated in the cities.

A guide to become Nano-technologistogist

Let use try to understand, if one wants to become a successful Nano professional, What educational background one should try to acquire?

Nanotechnology is a powerful innovative tool in the hands of the researchers, so it not a managerial profession. Most of the organization connected with Nanotechnology are engaged in the research to find out new structure and studying the properties of Nano particle. So, a good background of physics and chemistry is called for. One must understand at nano level we are dealing with manipulation of atoms and molecules and their arrangement, many factors which need to be taken care of on worldly(normal) scale devices do not apply to on nano scale devices. Likewise factors which can be ignored on normal scale may play important role at nano scale. So an open mind, analytical skill, mathematics, computer programming skills in simulation and algorithm development and implementation would be an asset and one should put lot of effort in developing them.

If you are thinking of application, than you need to also have a background and expertise in the field you would like to apply Nanotechnology. Medicine and electronics are the two major areas where we would be seeing lot of activity in this field.

At this stage it is difficult to say what actually would be achieved by Nanotechnology. Its a gamble with a calculated risk. The Nanotechnology has existed for now more than 30 years, It was not in the lime light and not taken seriously by researchers. But with the development and breakthrough achieved in recent years in electron microscope etc, substantial progress could be made in Nano science and devices constructed and demonstrated by IBM, Bell Labs, Intel have achieved miniaturization thought impossible as crossing the theoretical limit of miniaturization. Nanotechnology has pushed the limits further.

Here is a typical syllabus of Nanotechnology. But what you require is a burning desire to work in the field, any knowledge you can gain through formal, informal and self education would add to your capability and value. What you can deliver rather than your educational qualification matters.

Introduction to Nano-scale Science & Nano-scale Technology
    Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) & Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (NEMS)
    Size dependent electronic, magnetic and optical behavior of nano-materials
    Self-assembled organised systems: Dendrimers, Liposomes, Vesicles, Supramolecular Complexes, Langmuir Blodgett      
    films.
    Surface Analytical Instrumentation Techniques for Nanotechnology:
       Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), Scanning Probe Microscopy, Auger, SEM, TEM, XRD
        (Powder/Single crystal), AFM, STM, EDAX, XRF, ESCA, Carl Zeiss or LEICA Optical microscope, UPS (UV Photo    
        electron spectroscopy),            
        Experiments in Ultra thin films: Ellipsometry

Design and simulation of Micro and Nano-Structures by CAD & Computer techniques.
Nano-particles and Environmental Hazardness

Industrial applications of Nano sized materials
    Paints
    Catalysis
    Phosphor materials
    Laser materials, etc.
    Membranes and Mesoporous materials, water purifications.

Some of the Area in which work is being done:

Nano Technology Courses From Amity