Nanotech Basics
API Nanotronics invests in nanotechnology research to develop the exact products our client base requires — putting dollars into strategic R&D and supporting it beyond the lab with a ready-made market for the products that result.
Nanotechnology holds great potential to revolutionize manufacturing in almost every sector of the economy. From medicine to communication, from agriculture to transportation, nanotechnology is rapidly moving out of the theoretical realm and into a commercially viable industry.
Nanotech Scale
Nanotechnology involves the development and use of devices that use the nanoscopic properties of materials, where dimensions are less than 1,000 nanometers—one nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter. The term nanotechnology usually refers to techniques including advanced microfabrication that produce or measure features less than 100 nanometers in size.
For an idea of nanoscale, a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick; a red blood cell is approximately 7,000 nanometers wide; and a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.
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VISUALIZING NANOSCALE:
a nanoparticle compared to a basketball,
is the same as the basketball compared to the Earth |
The overall concept in nanotechnology is to structure and control matter at close to the atomic level, which will provide opportunities for radical new engineering designs and scientific breakthroughs far into our future. Science fields are converging toward the nanoscale: biologists will deal with the DNA molecules, chemists with large molecules such as polymers, and physicists will look at controlling smaller and smaller objects.
Modern science and engineering are focusing on the fabrication of devices, materials, and sensors at the atomic and molecular level where quantum mechanical effects are very important. Novel electrical, mechanical, and optical phenomena occur in these systems that don't occur in conventional bulk materials. Research is being carried out into very small components, many of which depend on quantum effects and can involve the movement of a very small number of electrons in their action. According to scientists, such devices will act faster and draw less power than larger components. |
