There is a plenty of room at the bottom.

---- ---Richard.P.Feynmann

 Nanoscale.

What is Nanotechnology?
Origin of Nanotechnology. Nanomaterials & their classification.

Why the properties of nanomaterials are different?

Nanofabrication. Characterization of Nanoparticles.

Applications of nanotechnology.

 Nano means 10-9 meters. A nanometer is one thousand millionth of a

meter. To understand how small or how big a nanometer is, let us look at few comparisons:

A carbon atom is 0.15nm in diameter.

A red blood cell is 7000nm wide. A water molecule is almost 0.3nm across. The human hair is about 80,000nm wide.

 Definitions :

Nanoscience : Nanoscience is the study of phenomena and manipulation of materials at atomic, molecular and macromolecular scales. Nanotechnology : Nanotechnology is the design, characterization, production and application of structures, devices and systems by controlling shape and size at the nanometerscale.

 Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent

development in scientific research , the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. The inspiration for the development of this field was given by an American Physicist Richard Feynman during his lecture There is plenty of room at the bottom at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on 29th December,1959. Development of Nanotechnology took its pace only after the discovery of experimental devices like Scanning Tunneling Microscope, SEM,TEM,AFM, etc.,

Richard.P.Feynman

Eric Drexler

 Nanomaterials could be defined as those materials

which have structured components with size less than 100nm at least in one dimension. Materials that are nanoscale in one dimension are layers such as thin films or surface coatings. Materials that are nanoscale in two dimensions include nanowires and nanotubes. Materials that are nanoscale in three dimensions are particles, for examples precipitates, colloids and quantum dots.

 Nanomaterials generally fall under two categories:

1) Fullerenes. 2) Nanoparticles. Fullerenes : Fullerene is a molecule composed entirely of carbon atoms, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called Bucky balls, and the cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes.

 The first fullerene discovered was buckminsterfullerene C60

in 1985 .It was named after Richard Buckminster Fuller, a famous architectural modeler who designed geodesic dome. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs): CNTs are allotropes of carbon with cylindrical nanostructure. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene family. They are categorized as SWNTs and MWNTs. They are potentially used in many applications of nanotechnology, electronics, optics and materials science.

MWCNT

Bucky ball

SWCNT

 Nanoparticles are available in different forms such as

clusters, metalnanoparticles, colloids, nanoshells, quantum dots etc. Because of their small size, nanoparticles have a very high surface area to volume ratio resulting in high reactivity. Such nanoparticles have to be stabilized during synthesis by using ligands sterically or electrostatically. Au nanoparticles are stabilized sterically by coating with a layer of polymer or protein. This layer keeps the particle from aggregating with neighboring particles. Another way is by attaching ligands with a negatively charged end group. This results in repulsive force between the particles avoiding merger of particles.

Stabilization of Gold particles

 We have been talking about nanomaterials because of

their peculiar size dependent properties. Many of the properties of nanomaterials are size dependent and they change with change in the size of the material. Two principle factors cause the properties of nanomaterials to differ significantly from other materials : 1)Increase in relative surface area. 2)Quantum confinement.

 Nanomaterials have a relatively larger surface area

when compared to the same volume(or mass) of the material produced in a larger form. A particle of size 30 nm has 5% of its atoms on its surface, at 10 nm 20% of its atoms, and at 3 nm 50% of its atoms. It makes materials more chemically reactive. In some cases materials that are inert in their larger form are reactive in their nanoscale form. This affects their strength or electrical properties.

 When the dimensions of a potential well or a potential

box are of the order of de Broglie wavelength of the electrons or mean free path of the electrons, energy levels of electron change. This effect is called Quantum confinement. When the material is in sufficiently small size typically 10 nm or less, organization of energy levels into which electrons can climb or fall change. These can effect the optical, electrical, & magnetic behavior of materials, particularly as the particle size approaches the smaller end of the nanoscale.

 Nanofabrication is achieved by two techniques :

(i)Top down approach . (ii) Bottom up approach.

In the top down approach we produce very small

structures from large pieces of material.

In the bottom up approach we produce relatively big

structures by arranging atom by atom or molecule by molecule.