New Materials May Emerge Solely to Support Nanotechnology

Self-assembling materials may require new directions in materials development. One of the most amazing advancements in nanotechnology is the ability to engineer materials to self-assemble into new materials or add new attributes.  The ability of certain molecules to bond in planned ways with others and produce new materials is at the cutting edge of nanotechnology product development, and will probably remain there for some time to come.

One-by-one assembly of nano-scale devices is practically useless for most applications. The assembly of nano-scale devices on a one-by-one basis yields so few of the devices that it has little practical use except in research.  To make practical use of nanotechnology devices it is necessary to make them in enormous numbers and, so far, self-assembly seems the only option.  Inventing new materials with applications in self assembly could be one of the next big directions in science.

A key direction for advancement is in the mastery of self assembly at larger scales. While nanotechnology products are currently limited mostly to coatings and special materials, the promise of micro-scale and larger devices being produced by self assembly is great.  After all, every living thing is an instance of self assembly.  While we are a long way from creating life forms, this hints at amazing advances in functionality for the devices we will create.

New materials that can be used in self-assembly processes could gain major importance. Materials that previously had no useful application may turn out to have potential as catalysts of self assembly, or as supporting materials in self assembly processes.  Devices larger than nano scale might be self-assembled in fluid suspensions, and the fluids involved may be new to us, for example.  Chemistry and physics will be key disciplines in the pursuit of commercial viable self assembly processes, and the results will be exciting.

As always, I welcome your comments.  – Tim

Interesting Information:
Self Assembly and Nanotechnology,  George M. Whitesides, Department of Chemistry, Harvard University

The Future of Energy: Things Never Change So Much …

Things never change so much as they stay the same. That’s the saying, anyway, and I figure I’ll see how things balance out if I stick around long enough.  I expect that there will be surprises, and some advances people expect won’t happen, or will be disappointing, while other inventions will become mainstays of our civilization.  Inevitably, the deciding factor behind the decision to discard or keep something involves money, and I believe that will extend to our energy infrastructure.

Can a Video Screen Be Painted on Using Nanotechnology?

Combining the ideas of wi-fi, nanotechnology, microtechnology, and optics could produce a video screen that can be painted on a surface in layers that will then self-assemble into operating, light-producing video screens.  Perhaps each pixel could be a tiny nanobot incorporating one or more colors of LED that it can turn on and off.  Energy can be derived from a gel or circulating liquid bath (with the added advantage of cooling the nanobots).  The controls to make each nanobot turn its light sources on and off can be implemented through data-encoded near infrared light so as to be invisible.  Such a light might provide an energy source to the pixelbots as well.  Could a modulated light source transmit enough data to address each nanobot individually  and pass control information quickly enough for the whole screen assembly to produce real-time video?

Future Cost Increases for Fossil Fuels Will Change Architecture

My new job puts me in a large windowless warehouse-like building, much of which has been turned into office space, cube farms with offices embedded in the walls nearby.  At any given time nobody inside knows if it is raining or if the sun is shining, if it’s day or night.  As in most commercial buildings, the lights and ventilation fans run almost all the time, which seems costly.  One nearby building has a small wind turbine on it that runs a lot of the time, however, and another I see near work has a solar panel on the roof.   All that has made me consider what the buildings of thirty years from now will be like.  Certainly they will be quite different, and I expect the inevitable rise in the cost of fossil fuels, and all energy sources “in sympathy”, to be an important influence on their architecture.  So what will commercial buildings be like in the future?

We Are Nanotechnology

All life is composed of nanotechnology. From the original molecular structures that developed the ability to replicate themselves a billion or more years ago to the most sophisticated life forms, we all have resulted from an evolutionary process that started with, and uses at every level, nanotechnology concepts.  Life started at nano-scale, and a huge majority of all life forms, the greatest bio-diversity, still exists at nano-scale.

What Will Happen to Businesses When Energy Cost Eclipses Labor Cost?

Today the cost of labor is the biggest single cost element for many businesses, and drives most decisions. The rise of fossil fuel prices will not be smooth,  however, as we have seen in 2008, when oil prices doubled in a matter of months and then fell back to 30% of their peak in a few months more.  During these spikes, and in the longer term as fossil fuel sources become more difficult and costly to extract, energy costs will rise to a level that challenges or surpasses labor as the biggest component of cost for many or most businesses.  The law of supply and demand also kicks in as population continues to expand, and labor costs in many industries will fall as increasing numbers of people are seeking those jobs.  At the same time, rising energy costs will reduce or eliminate the advantage of manufacturing in “low cost countries” such as China.  How will businesses react?  Will the net effect be to cause people to generally live at a lower economic level and make less money for equivalent work compared with today?  Will manufacturing of progressively lower cost and higher margin goods return to the developed countries?

Could Nanotechnology-Enhanced Fabrics Yield High-Tech Clothing?

High-tech clothing could help us save energy in the future. Could nanotechnology be used to create fabrics that modify their insulating or heat-transferring capabilities on demand?   Clothing already exists with built in solar cells and connections to charge one’s cell phone or MP3 player.  In the future, though, saving energy on our biggest uses such as home heating will be important, and clothing that allows us to turn down the thermostat could be a great application for nanotechnology.

Future Nanotechnology Could Change Warfare in Places Like the Pakistani-Afghani Mountains

What future military equipment might succeed in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistani border? Why has Osama Bin Laden been able to successfully hide for years in the mountains on the Afghani-Pakistan border?  Modern military equipment and strategies have failed in this rugged environment, first for the Russians and more recently for the U.S. Can a new high technology approach be devised, incorporating nanotechnology, that will enable the capture of Osama Bin Laden and his Al Quaida commanders? It may take years more, but the technology and strategy to carry out difficult operations like this are not far in the future.

Nanotechnology Brings Thinner and More Effective Insulation

Nanotechnology insulation has implications for the future. More than one company is already selling nanotechnology-enhanced insulation products (link) (link) (link). It is clear that nano-scale materials and tiny mechanical nano-structures can be used to give surfaces amazing properties and functions, just by painting them. What other applications are emerging or not yet developed?

The Nanotechnology Future of Lawn (and Hair) Care?

Do you dislike cutting your lawn as much as I do? In part it’s the time and effort involved, but in part it’s the smelly, noisy, internal combustion engine that drives the mower. I do it as inoften as possible without annoying the neighbors too much or violating any ordinances, but am always thinking about alternatives that would need no attention at all. I have wondered if, in a couple of decades or so, nanotechnology might provide some new answers to my problems.  Remember that tomorrow’s great ideas usually sound fantastic (crazy) to us today, but the first to make them real could live very comfortably thereafter.  (Is this a part of the American dream that has faded from our collective consciousness?)  As a result of my daydreams, I came up with the following ideas:

Why Can’t I Shingle My Roof with Solar Cells Now?

Why can’t I shingle my roof with solar cells now? Years ago I heard about a company in the Southwestern U.S. that makes polymer solar cells in sheets, so inexpensive that they were predicted to be able to provide a roofing product that would generate electricity by perhaps 2003. Since I first heard of them, I have heard of other companies in Europe and the United States with even more interesting technologies – solar cells being printed by ink jet printers on rolls of polymer, and which use nano-scale particles to achieve much higher efficiency than previous, similar concepts. Where are they, and why aren’t we seeing these new technologies coming on-line?

Nanotechnology Surfaces Could Have Great Potential

Nanotechnology-enhanced surfaces could bring amazing capabilities. Nanotechnology research has moved well into the area of creating molecular coatings that, for instance, resist letting dirt or water adhere to them. Self-assembling molecular coatings appear to be in commercial development and production by more than one company. What might come next, though? Since nanotechnology is at a molecular-level, and molecules have the ability to attract specific other molecules of different types based on the jigsaw puzzle-like relationship of their external shapes, couldn’t a surface coated with nanomachines be made to grab specific molecules that came close enough and either hang onto them or pass them, bucket brigade style, to their neighbors, possibly in a specific direction?

Future Energy Sources

A new high-technology energy source could be useful for low-power applications. The news of a team of scientists making electricity by collecting mechanical energy from falling rain drops (link) illustrates the creativity available to humanity, and that the possibilities for invention always exceed our expectations. I fully agree with certain political leaders that we need a lot more people inventing in their basements and garages if we are to overcome our energy problems. How can incentives be provided to get people thinking and working that way, though?

Sea-bottom gas hydrates keep resurfacing. Another source of energy has been in the news recently. Gas hydrates frozen on the floor of the oceans, while so far untapped, contain huge amounts of energy, some estimates as high as several hundred times the total natural gas reserves. All we need is the technologies to mine them, and such technologies are under development (link). Of course, this is not a renewable fuel source, and the most probably use involves burning and all the emissions associated with that. Also, anything non-renewable is temporary by definition, but it could still help bridge the gap between when petroleum and coal become too scarce and expensive, and when we can implement some other energy source such as fusion power.  (Side note: some scientists attribute the sudden and mysterious disappearance of ships and planes over the Gulf of Mexico or Bermuda Triangle to releases of flammable gas hydrates from the sea bottom, and their subsequent rise to the surface where they could be ignited by a passing vehicle.)

These aren’t the only rarely-mentioned or new alternatives out there, fortunately. I look forward to learning of more of them and discussing them here. Please comment on any other interesting alternative energy sources you may know of.

As always, I welcome your comments and thanks in advance. – Tim

How to Kill Nanobots

“Don’t tase me, bro! I’ll have to get all new nanobots!” Electromechanical nanobots, the type that many think of when they hear “nanobot”, would have vulnerabilities. At first it seems it would be difficult to kill such a tiny machine, but wouldn’t a sufficiently strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disrupt the operation of the tiny device and possibly “kill” it?

Nanotechnology Has Amazing Implications for Surveillance Industry

Could there soon be spy devices too small to easily detect? Imagine microscopic (or nanoscopic?) “bugs” that could be planted on a person through their food, inhaled, or sprayed on their clothes, and which would travel in their blood stream or hide in their hair or pores, transmitting audio or vital signs to nearby data collectors, themselves microscopic, which could forward the information farther along wirelessly. An intelligence agency could achieve greatly expanded capacity to observe and intervene, all without anyone being able to detect the devices with the human eye. Nanotechnology could certainly make the professional spy’s job easier.