Nanotechnology: How to Get Into the Field

In this article, I'm going to cover nanotechnology and just a little about what's going on in the field. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale in order to develop certain properties like the mechanical electrical and magnetic properties as an example that are not otherwise possible how atoms and molecules are arranged for a given material goes inside to why certain materials break when being dropped and why others stretch when being pulled.

So if we can manipulate those atoms then we can change those properties like making glasses that don't break when being dropped with nanotechnology you'll be working on a 1 to 100 nanometer scale or nanotechnology is a vast range of applications from making better medicine to better computers which we'll get into in a sec first where some of the best majors to get into if you want to go into nanotechnology because at least in most undergrad schools they don't offer nanotechnology as a major so some of the best engineering majors to go into to set you up for a nanotechnology are bioengineering Chemical Engineering Electrical Engineering mechanical engineering and material science and engineering then chemistry and physics are good Sciences to go into there's of course more but these were the ones that came up the most in terms of undergrad some schools may offer a minor nanotechnology or some elective classes but if you want to dive into research then you very likely will need to obtain a master's.

So you can actually specialize in nanotechnology be aware that you might not even see a hint of nanotechnology in undergrad so you have to actively pursue it so I just want to give some examples of research that have been going on in this field in electronics and computing professors as well as a graduate student at the University of Illinois recently discovered a nanowire memory cell which will be used for superconducting computers this consists of two superconducting nano wires which are basically nano scale rods that conduct electricity before this scaling down memory cells to a nano scale has been a challenge but when done would allow for very fast computations by a super computer without dissipating heat but the nanowires helped solve this problem and will make super computers much smaller in size then a new type of nanosensor is being worked on that has the power to detect explosives like TNT which could replace the need for sniffer dogs the researchers looked into complex cage molecules that we're essentially able to capture the explosive molecules that they are looking for this could not only tell if an explosive is present but how much of it.

Then electrical engineers have invented a sensor made out of carbon nanotubes which I'll talk about soon that can monitor the tread of tires in real-time which can tell drivers when the rubber that meets the road is growing too thin the nanotubes or nanotechnology part came in because the sensors have to track millimetre changes in tread depth when it comes to material science physicists at Queen's University made extremely thin electrical conducting sheets these might be able to revolutionize small electronic devices which control things like our smartphones - medical devices the cheeks they made our almost as thin as graphene which is the thinnest material in the world we're trying to make electronics smaller and smaller but things are getting so small that it soon won't be possible to get any smaller and one professor said to account for this research might suggest an idea of an etch-a-sketch like solution where nanoscale electrical connections can be drawn then wiped away as needed for whatever application but this is not a reality at the moment another big one in material science is carbon nanotubes.

These are tube-shaped materials made out of carbon that have desirable properties like they are extremely strong and have desirable thermal conductivity and various electrical properties these are already being manufactured we are finding new and better ways to put them to use for example recently NASA launched a rocket to test the viability of composite nanotechnology their computer simulation showed that carbon nanotube reinforcement on the spacecraft could lead to a 30% reduction in mass which means way cheaper cost the tested tensile properties of the carbon nanotubes against the conventional carbon fiber composites to see which was better then grafting like I said is a very important material this is the thinnest material in the world at 1 atoms thick which is just a single layer and is also the basic structural of carbon nanotubes graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and conducts heat and electricity very well it is also very light so when experiment that was recently conducted was to show that graphene could help in the automobile industry for a competition students fabricated a lighter hood that was created from graphene.

They conducted the test I would replicate a crash at 30 miles per hour and it was reported that the hood was able to deform then bounced back to its original form graphene is also being used to look into smaller and faster electronics as well as thin and flexible display screens next is medicine and there are many articles saying that nanotechnology is the future of medicine so this is a big one and a really common topic I saw with drug delivery as in ways to transport a compound in the body nanotechnology is allowing injectable cancer medicines to be delivered in smaller volumes while increasing the amount of the drug which would help reduce medication errors researchers are also looking for ways to destroy cancerous cells from what's in a tumor as an example they want to use nano shells which are type of nanoparticle which they designed to absorb light of different frequencies and generate heat then when inside the tumor the intense heat generated can kill tumor cells without harming healthy ones in 2004 chemists at NYU made the nano BOTS from fragments of DNA that was able to walk on two legs that were both one goal from the scientist was to one day have a molecular scale assembly line where a molecule could be moved and put into place by nanobots just like with a car assembly line but this time on a nano scale.

In terms of medicine the ideal innovation would be to have nanobots within your bloodstream that basically patrol for tumors and various abnormalities that could cause harm although at the moment that is just not a reality maybe one day it will be and also know how biology or biochemistry that weren't listed before are also majors you can get into if you want to go into nanotechnology and something you can look into is bio nanotechnology which would be a field that might interest you for those interested in biology and medicine so as you can see there's a lot going on in this field and maybe one day cancer will be cured by just a shot the nanotechnology applies to a lot more in terms of solar energy nanotechnology is helping to improve materials efficiency and reduce the cost of manufacturing nanotechnology is also being used for water and air treatment for example they made something called a drinkable book which isn't exactly what it sounds like but it's a book where every page is actually a filter that you can care out and that filter is comprised of nanoparticles that kill bacteria and can turn raw sewage into drinking water.

One way food scientists could use nanotechnology includes using nanosensors to identify any diseases that will be harmful to consumers they're also conducting research on ways to use nanotechnology to keep food fresher for longer periods of time overall nanotechnology is a very wide field that includes electronics and semiconductors automotive applications aerospace applications Sporting Goods and so on in school no matter what your major is you may want to look into taking certain chemistry courses as well as some quantum physics courses as those pertaining to the small scale and will lay a foundation for further education in nanotechnology and again it's a very broad discipline you can have two people really interested in nanotechnology but go to totally different paths maybe one major and electrical engineering and undergrad and the other in chemistry.

One takes electives and nanoelectronics while the other inorganic nanomaterials they probably should both go on to get at least a master's then the EE could look in the research for making better semiconductor devices for electronics and when working on this they might have to take a top-down approach which is basically taking a larger material and removing parts to eventually get what you want on a nanoscale imagine trying to make the world's smallest computer chip the other way and assembling everything atom by atom that would be much tougher which is why they use the top-down approach then the chemists might want to go into research on making better nanobots that can assemble molecules that example I gave of its earlier was done by a chemist and they use more of a bottom-up approach where they work with assembling atoms and molecules like Legos so even though nanotechnologies on a nanoscale with these two individuals would do in a lab would be much different