On January 24th I had the opportunity to attend the Fred Friendly Seminar series Nano: the Power of Small. This was a panel debate on the what sorts of questions government needs to ask when evaluating the responsibilities a new company working with nanotechnology needs to assume. Each panelist played a role in the political process: Christine Daniel, Deputy City Manager of Fremont, was mayor, with two advisors, Andrew Maynard of the Woodrow Wilson Center and Clayton Teague, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. Richard Denison, of Environmental Defense, was a city council member representing green groups and Kristen Kulionowski of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice represented ‘normal’ citizens. Finally, Mark Bunger of Lux Research and Sherri Kirk of Stoel Rives Law firm represented business interests. The discussion will be shown on PBS (I have not been able to find when, I apologize). I recommend the program immensely if you want to find out quickly what nano is about. Alternatively, if you don’t have a television, or time to watch it, you can continue reading…
Nanotechnology is science that takes place “at the level of atoms and molecules, where materials about 1/80,000th the width of a human hair begin to take on new and sometimes powerful properties” (description used by FF seminar). At this scale, materials do not behave as we would expect them to; the properties ascribed to materials by the laws of chemistry and physics do not apply. This means that well-known materials can have new uses or properties. For example, zinc oxide is used in suntan lotion. Normally, it leaves a white, chalky residue on your skin. But at nano scale, zinc oxide is transparent on the skin.
It also means that these new materials can be re-arranged to make new structures that are adaptive and can perform new functions. Potential applications of this include drugs that are better at going where they need go within the body or carbon nano tubes that can be a conductor or semi-conductor 100-times stronger than steel. Eventually, these new structures could themselves be re-arranged to create nano-systems, and then molecular nano-systems that would mimic how biological systems work (with each molecule having a specific function).
Nano science also has extremely wide applications: health, food, cosmetics, environment, energy, manufacturing, information technologies, clothing, are all areas where nano-based products are being developed. For these reasons –the ability to make both passive and active materials and the wide range of applications– many observers say nano will impact tremendously on how and what we produce, and hence on how we live.
How far away is all this? Research is advancing extremely fast, although few want to make predictions of how long we will need to wait for certain types of products to be on the shelf (currently about 700 products are being commercialized, according to the Small Times). Some of the important scientific and government hurdles right now are:
Manufacturing: many nano-structures can only be made on a small scale. Until a method is found by which they can be made in series, it is impossible to envisage their widespread use. A good example is carbon nano-tubes.
Regulation: the only government body to have regulated nano specifically is… Berkeley City Council! Some say the lack of regulation is holding many companies –especially small ones– back from investing in nano.
Toxicity: more tests need to be conducted to determine the toxicity of nano-materials and structures. Relatively scarce funds have gone into research and development, but it is now time to start diverting part of the research effort into toxicity and life cycle research.
For more information on nano, I recommend reading Small Times. This will not be my last nano entry, so if you have specific questions on nano or other comments please publish them on this blog, and I will try to respond in up-coming articles.
