The Nanotech BC Blog: Safety, Nano-Particles and Fuel Cells

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to participate in a day of meetings and discussion about nanotechnology and safety at the National Research Council, Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation. Nanowerk has a great article on the major challenges to realizing the potential of hydrogen fuel cells and how nanotech fits in to making that happen.

The researchers at the CFCI need to deal with nano-particles as part of their work. Tuesday was an attempt to get a handle on how to evaluate and respond to health risks caused by nano-particles.

The problem is a lack of knowledge. With conventional materials we know how much a person can be exposed to safely. When we use those same materials at the nano-scale however, our information starts to fall apart. Most of these nano-materials are new even if their macro-scale counterparts are not, and are being developed much faster than toxicologists can test them.

Nobody can guarantee safety, especially at this point. The key, and I heard this reiterated many times, is to be proactive. Traditionally, health and safety have been reactive and investigatory, i.e. it's only after someone gets sick or dies that we try to find out why and stop it from happening again. The specter of asbestos looms large.

That kind of approach isn't good enough. Researchers and health and safety experts are working hard to intelligently calculate risks and develop ways to protect people well before the damage is done. The price for this kind of forethought is dealing with a lot of unknowns, but step by step we're getting it figured out, and in the process making nanotechnology safer.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Beetles, Wood and Nanotech

Speaking of using nanotech to benefit the environment, Nanowerk has a very good summary of some of the many ways that nanotechnology looks to be able to reduce greenhouse gases.

Global Warming is something we've been hearing about for a long time. It's only been comparatively recently that visible, serious consequences are starting to hit home. One of the least discussed but most serious consequences of a warming climate is the expansion of pests into new territories.

In BC that means the Mountain Pine Beetle. Thanks to a series of warm winters that caused the population of the Pine Beetle to explode, vast stretches of forests in British Columbia have turned rust red and died.

Unfortunately nanotechnology doesn't offer any easy solutions to the Pine Beetle problem. Pine Beetle damaged wood can be sold, but at reduced prices and this is hitting the forest industry hard. Nanotechnology cant protect the trees themselves, but it might be able to protect the economies that rely on forestry by enabling the creation of new high value products from damaged timber.

Nanocrystalline Cellulose is a product of plants derived through nanotechnology. As is so often the case when dealing with nanotech, nanocrystalline cellulose has properties that are quite different from its macro-scale counterpart, including "extraordinary catalytic, electrical and optical properties."

Nanocrystalline Cellulose is an example of how nanotechnology is allowing us to look at the resources we depend on and see them in a new way. By examining materials at the nano-scale we sometimes find uses and capabilities that nobody dreamed were there.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Use Nanotech Instead

Nanotech gets its incredible potential from the unusual properties that materials sometimes exhibit at the nano-scale. That potential is a double-edged sword however -- we don't know very much about the toxicity of most nano-particles or how they interact with natural environments. This should, and is being studied.

At the same time nanotechnology promises new technologies that have the potential to address some of our most serious environmental problems. Nanowerk brings up a further use for nanotechnology -- to substitute for dangerous chemicals that are in use now.

The key to nanotechnology is that it allows us, to an extent, to rationally design our materials. This isn't a simple process but it holds the promise of allowing us to create new substances that can meet our needs without the often very serious drawbacks of conventional chemicals.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Watch and Learn

Soft Machines led me to homunculus which in turn led me to Nano2Hybrids...

It's one thing to read about nanotechnology, but now you can watch it happening. Over the next three years Nano2Hybrids is going to be posting video diaries recording real experimental nanotechnology research.

Are you ready to see what science looks like? It might not be pretty...

Not quite ready for that? Brush up on the basics with the Top 10 things to know about nanotechnology.

The Nanotech BC Blog: 3 Views of the Nanotech Mountain

Long View:

Nanoscale memory devices made of quantum dots and viruses -- could lead to disease treating nanorobots.

Short View:

Simple magnet can control the color of a liquid through affecting nano-particles of iron oxide -- could lead to new display screens and electronic paper and ink.

Panoramic View:

NanoArt -- science, technology, photography and sculpture; beautiful snapshots of the nanoworld.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Who Needs Nanobots?

Christine Peterson at Nanodot makes a good point about unrealistic expectations in nanotechnology by bringing up a 2000 prediction that full clinical application of "fleets of microscopic robots" would be underway by 2003.

The funny thing about predictions is that though they're often wrong about means, they can sometimes be surprisingly accurate about ends. The purpose of fleets of circulatory robots is the medical treatment of cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses. The lack of advanced nanorobotics isn't stopping researchers from using nanotech to attack those diseases in different ways.

PhysOrg.com has an article on how attaching polymeric nanoparticles to red blood cells turns the body's own blood into an ideal delivery system for medicine. This is a brilliant example of how synergising with the body's natural systems can allow us to elegantly do things that we're not yet capable of any other way.

There's nothing wrong with working towards a vision of nanorobotics, but it's important to be able to appreciate the danger of getting fixated on a hypothetical "ideal" technology and missing simpler and sometimes better solutions.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Hierarchical Systems and Natural Strength

One of the unexpected benefits of nanotechnology is that it is making us appreciate the amazing sophistication of naturally evolved materials. You may not have thought much of it the last time your arm was in a cast, but bone is one of the most remarkable materials in nature, combining strength and resilience with a range of biological functions.

Bone is the scaffold of most life on earth and the secret to its success lies at the nanoscale. Nanowerk has a fascinating article on the molecular properties of bone and how they use hierarchies of flexible and strong components to build up a material that's able to absorb huge amounts of stress without failure.

In biology, universality generates robustness, while diversity enables optimality. Materials like bone, being a nano-composite of strong but brittle and soft but ductile materials, illustrate this unification of components with disparate properties within a hierarchical structure.

Nature's toolbox begins with nanotechnology. By slowly unraveling the molecular structures of natural materials like bones, researchers are learning principals that can be applied to human-made materials in order to make them stronger, lighter and more efficient.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Very Tiny Needles

What can't carbon nanotubes do? Now scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have been able to use them to inject quantum dots into living cells.

With a diameter of just one nanometer, you're not likely to see a carbon nanotube injector at your local clinic anytime soon, but they do seem poised to play a key role in cell biology research and gene delivery. Yet another example of nanotech as enabling technology paving the way for further advances to come.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Science Without Borders

In elementary school most of us had a class called Science. Later on that was broken up into physics, chemistry and biology -- and generally science has been broken up ever since.

Nanotechnology poses a challenge to those traditional clear-cut divisions. At the nanometer scale physics, chemistry and biology are inescapably intertwined -- resulting in developments that are difficult to classify.

Case in point: Nanowerk has a great article on "green" nanotechnology; using plants to fabricate inorganic nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is vividly demonstrating how the divisions we use to organize science are not necessarily natural divisions at all, but artifacts of our own thinking.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Learning from Geckos

Not only is Mother Nature inventive, she's had a very long time to add to her tool box. A case in point is the humble gecko -- able to scamper up walls and hang upside-down on ceilings thanks to the tiny fibers on its feet.

Now nanotechnology is about to let us do the same thing by using carbon nanotubes to develop tape based on the same principle that makes a gecko's feet sticky -- but with four times the adhesive power. Ars Technica and PHYSORG.com report on the cutting edge of stickiness.

Better tape might seem prosaic, but it will be advances like gecko-tape that bring nanotechnology into the mainstream by providing large jumps in effectiveness in materials with huge numbers of uses.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Long Carbon Nanotubes and the Desert Bloom

It's easy to think technological progress follows an incremental and predictable path -- that research leads to development, then to commercialization and finally to the consumer.

Take a trip to a desert in spring and you'll see evidence of a different model for growth. One day the landscape is dry and bleak, and the next it explodes into plants and flowers. Years of invisible preparation have been taking place and the result is a change so swift and complete that the landscape becomes an entirely different place.

Right now the desert of nanotechnology looks dry. Billions of dollars are being invested and thousands of researchers are working all over the world on countless different issues, but we've yet to see any single, revolutionary advance. Even so, the groundwork is being laid, and every day nanotech moves forward.

One of the most exciting new developments is the production by UC engineering researchers of arrays of 18mm carbon nanotubes. That might not seem like much, but it's a huge increase in length over past efforts and is an important step towards producing a material that is stronger and more conductive than anything now in use.

What will come of this achievement? A replacement for copper wire? Energy independence? A space elevator? Nobody can say for sure because so much more work remains to be done before carbon nanotubes fulfill their promise. Even so, one thing seems certain -- we're getting closer and closer to the day the desert will bloom.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Good Things Start Small

I'm eager to get started posting about all of the amazing things going on in the world of nanotechnology, but before I do I thought it might make sense to write a little about who we are at Nanotech BC, what we're trying to do, and what this blog is for. Nanotech BC is a not-for-profit organization started as a collaboration between British Columbia's business, scientific and governmental communities. Nanotech BC has three goals:

• To advocate for growth of BC's nanotechnology research and development community and infrastructure.
• To communicate with industrial, academic, government and public stakeholders to increase awareness of nanotechnology.
• To represent BC's nanotechnology interests and pursue partnerships nationally and internationally.

This blog is one of the ways we are working to achieve these goals. Research and development in nanotechnology is progressing at a blistering pace and we want this blog to be a record of what's happening, particularly in BC. You'll find regular updates on the science and business of nanotechnology as well as thoughts on where nanotechnology is going and what it means for BC. Community is built through discussion and we hope that this blog will help get people thinking and talking about nanotechnology and the exciting challenges and promises that it brings.