Blog Post 8: Applications

1) "Green Gasoline" which is "a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources such as switchgrass and poplar trees." http://www.nano.gov/sites/default/files/breakthrough-greengasolinedevt-nsf.pdf. 


2) Surface Adhesion: based on naturally occurring adhesives scientists have looked towards gekkos to improve stickiness or adhesives.  The molecular and nano-scales have turned them on to nature's designs in allowing creatures to adhere to surfaces.

3)  Photovoltaic Cells: improved collection and efficiency of PV cells are opening up practical possibilities for solar power.  Cheap and efficient PV cells from making crystal structures of silicon at the nano/molecular scale allow for applications of solar power in new areas

4)  The particles display different properties when you add one atom of the same element to others of the same element.  According to the website posted, "But when particles are created with dimensions of about 1–100 nanometers (where the particles can be “seen” only with powerful specialized microscopes), the materials’ properties change significantly from those at larger scales." http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/special

5)  Nanomaterials are present in many daily objects such as smoke, mist or fog, or the hemoglobin in our blood.  The nanoparticles are the building blocks of all matter on the macro scale.  http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/working-nanoscale

6)  Self-assembly of nanomaterials is an astonishing idea, but it is based of preexisting materials.  The skin cells in your body self-assemble and the cellulose fibers in plants and trees also self-assemble to generate larger bodies of materials that create trees and your skin.  Water molecules also self assemble to form liquid water based on hydrogen bonding and polar-nonpolar bonding. http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/manufacturing

7)  Chemical vapor deposition: a process of nanofabrication which deposits desired materials on the surface of a substrate surface by reaction or decomposition of that substrate with the desired materials.  http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/manufacturing

8)  Treatment of disease can become a precise science and will be able to catch and eliminate life-threatening diseases very early on.  This is because our biochemistry works on the nanoscale and can therefore be altered at the nanoscale to obtain the desired results.  According to the site, "For example, hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen through the body, is 5.5 nanometers in diameter. A strand of DNA, one of the building blocks of human life, is only about 2 nanometers in diameter."  http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/special.  This scale can be manipulated using methods found in nanoscience.

9)  Nano-Filters: the ability to inhibit materials from entering a fluid or gas you want to keep clean (air, water, compressed air, nitrogen, etc.), the nanoscale will allow you to control that precisely.  It enables you to manufacture a filter to be porous enough to allow the desired fluid or gas through, while blocking out the rest, at a very precise level: the nanoscale.  http://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/special

10)  Bending Light: due to the ability to control the size and sometimes the shape of particles beginning at the nanoscale, you can adjust the light diffracting from that particle and control the color emitting from that particle.  This will make it possible to adjust the frequencies of light emitted as well as the color.  It is a whole study called quantum dots.