The Nanotech BC Blog: Tougher Armor through Carbon Nanotubes

I suppose that it's inevitable that one of the first showcases for new technology is weapons. It's slightly more comforting to see that some of the new materials nanotechnology is enabling are meant to protect lives instead of kill them.

The BBC news has a good article on how carbon nanotubes are being used to create "future fibres" for use within body armor.

"Our fibre is up there with the existing high performance bibres such as Kevlar", said Professor Windle. But he added: "We've seen bits that are much better than Kevlar in all respects."

The article also has a good section explaining the process of making the super-strong material. They've convinced me that what there producing has a lot of promise, but there are a few conspicuous and unanswered questions: How much does it cost to produce, and how scalable is the manufacturing process?

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: 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: Nano-Agony and Nano-Ecstasy

It's not winning that counts, it's how you play the game.

The SFU team at the Nanogram division of the 2007 RoboCup ran into trouble with their plastic-based "Whirling Dervish" entry to the worlds smallest soccer competition. It seems the robot -- less than one-sixth the size of an amoeba -- didn't have the weight to move smoothly across the "field."

Complications notwithstanding, the nanogram soccer competition is succeeding admirably at its goals: raising nanotechnology's profile in a fun and exciting way, and providing proof of principal for more demanding future nanotechnology applications off the soccer field.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Everyday I Write the Book

I keep stumbling upon great nanotech blogs:

Nanotechnology Development Blog -- articulate and wide ranging. I've only read the first four or five posts, but they seem to have a nice balance between research and business. It's definitely on my daily reading list from now on.

Blog-Nano: Nanoscale Materials and Nanotechnology -- I hadn't even gotten through the Weekly Round-up post before I linked to it. In particular I'm grateful for the link to SFU's grand achievement in fine-print: the Worlds Smallest Book. Here's a picture, but make sure you have your glasses (or a scanning electron microscope) handy.

Finally, I can't finish the week without linking to something a bit more mind expanding. Nanowerk has a great article about nanotechnology and neural interfaces. Nanotech is starting to blur the line between human and machine, raising questions that we need to start considering.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Very Small Soccer

Under-20 is one thing; under a micron is something else. I've never been too interested in FIFA, but I'll be cheering for the Simon Fraser University team competing in the nanogram division of the 2007 RoboCup. Even the Vancouver Sun is following the game!

PhD Students Daniel Sameoto, See-Ho Tsang and Ian Foulds have developed a soccer team so small you need a scanning electron microscope to follow the action. Soccer might not be the first thing you think of when you hear "nanotechnology", but success on the playing field could be the first step to more significant applications in medicine, electronics and a wide range of other fields.

Go Canada!

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: 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: Why Stretching Matters

Perhaps the most surprising recent story in consumer electronics is the phenomenal success of Nintendo's Wii. Overpowered by Microsofts X-Box and Sony's Playstation 3, the Wii has none the less been flying off the shelves since it was introduced -- all because of an intuitive, candy-bar shaped controller and the fact that Nintendo understands a truth that too often gets lost: The way we interact with technology is just as important as technology itself.

Tech companies are starting to realize that faster and cheaper are no longer enough -- usefulness is king. Unfortunately, that often turns out to be extremely difficult because many of the materials that are central to electronics don't lend themselves to the kind of flexible use that our lives demand.

Nanotechnology may be the solution to this problem. By altering materials at the nano-scale it's becoming possible to create new capabilities in crucial materials. Physorg.com reports on advances in stretchable silicon. Advances like these beg the question, what could we do with computers in gloves or cloths or blankets? What would the ability to break computing power out of the boxes it's locked in mean to our everyday lives? Nanotechnology may be the key to finding out.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Old Medicine, New Technology

Herbs play an important roll in folk medicine and one of the most important of them is turmeric. That bright yellow spice, in addition to providing taste and color to curry, is used to treat infection, arthritis, fever and many other illnesses.

Now curcumin, the substance that gives turmeric its color, is being combined with medical nanotechnology to fight cancer, Alzheimer's, and maybe more. Technology Review has an article on nanotech delivery systems that take molecular-scale doses of curcumin to tumors .

Medicine is one of the key places where nanotechnology can make a difference. On June 7th, Dr. Ellen Wasan of the BC Cancer Research Center spoke at the Nanotech BC Networking Session at BCIT. She presented on work she has been doing developing nanopharmacuticles that can take advantage of tumor physiology to deliver medicine directly to cancer cells. Dr. Wasan is using nanotechnology to solve toxicity, solubility and elimination problems.

Nanotech work is happening all over the world, yielding a wide variety of approaches to many devastating problems. This diversity comes from that fact that nanotechnology is no one set thing -- it's a broad enabling technology that gives researchers everywhere powerful new tools.

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: The Power of a 100 Suns!

This is a few days old, but Phys.org has reported on the development of 40% efficient solar cells. That can't be anything but good news.

For anybody interested in solar power research in British Columbia, Mike Wolf is working at UBC on Energy Storing and Energy Harvesting and Karim Karim is at Simon Fraser Universtity concentrating on Mechanically Flexible Solar Cells using Thin Film Silicon Technology.

The Nanotech BC Blog: Sweet Power and the Taste of Success

Pacemakers, cochlear implants, neurostimulators, drug delivery systems -- implanted medical devices are crucial to the lives of tens of thousands of people. All of those systems need electricity which means bulky batteries containing toxic chemicals and dangerous, expensive surgery to extract and replace them. But perhaps not for much longer.

Sweet Power, a BC medical technology company based on Vancouver Island is developing an implantable fuel cell capable of generating electricity using blood sugar. Sweet Power's glucose fuel cell is a great example of MEMS (microelectronic systems) and how as devices get smaller, their power and usefulness keep increasing.

Sweet Power was recently recognized for their achievements at the 2007 Nanotech Ventures Awards in the Health and Medical Category. The significance of what Sweet Power is doing goes beyond their own technical achievements. By developing a way to make implantable devices cleaner, safer and smaller, Sweet Power is enabling the next generation of technology to save lives.

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.