Prospects of nanotechnology
Nanoagents have contactedTigran Oganesyan, "Expert"
The well-known report of the American RAND Corporation "Global Technological Revolution 2020", published in 2006, specifically identified four main areas of scientific and technological progress that will have the greatest impact on the future of our civilization.
These are biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, technologies for creating new materials and information technologies.
At the same time, with a more detailed analysis of the medium-term revolutionary prospects, according to the leading US think tank, it becomes quite obvious that in fact we should not talk about four autonomously developing branches of science and technology, but about one mighty cluster integrating within itself almost all the main research projects and developments of these industries.
The growing multidisciplinary nature of research projects and the gradual convergence of various branches of scientific knowledge, of course, can already be considered the most important trend determining the long-term dynamics of modern scientific research. And on the example of the four main drivers of the global technological revolution of the beginning of the XXI century, identified by RAND analysts, this trend is perhaps particularly noticeable.
Atomic precision technologiesIn fact, all these new NTP engines have been jointly developing the same research field for a long time, methodically identifying the behavior features of tiny objects and structures that manifest themselves primarily at the notorious nanoscale.
According to the ingenious definition proposed by the developers of the American National Nanotechnology Initiative, all nanotechnology projects must meet three main criteria:
- these studies should be carried out at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular level – in the range from 1 to 100 nm;
- in the course of research, structures, devices or systems should be created that have new properties and functions due to their small dimension;
- these properties and functions can be controlled or modified at the atomic level.
Having applied these criteria to many scientific and technological projects formally related to the field of modern physics, chemistry and biology (or, continuing to exploit the set proposed by RAND, biotech, IT and technologies for creating new materials), we will inevitably have to engage in mass pasting on them the prefix "nano". Therefore, having once again recognized the correctness of Kozma Prutkov, we will not try to embrace the immensity, but will confine ourselves to a brief tour of the most fertile nanowires.
But first I will quote a fragment from my 2006 interview with the world's leading specialist in the physics of surfaces and nanometer structures, Don Eigler (one of the creators of the scanning tunneling microscope). In particular, he noted: "The prospects of nanotechnology in medicine look particularly promising today, for example, in the development of technologies for the targeted delivery of drugs to infected areas of the body or, say, in the cultivation of synthetic molecules based on artificial nanofiber chains that stimulate the growth of various cells.
In addition to medicine, new quantum dots (large artificial molecules of the order of several nanometers in size, which consist of tens and hundreds of thousands of atoms and are created on the basis of conventional inorganic semiconductors) and new types of light sources are of great interest. Serious hopes are also associated with nanophotonics, in particular, with the fact that on its basis we will receive new highly integrated components of optical communications and significantly improve the technical characteristics of computers. Further, experiments on the creation of various nanoparticles are very active, in particular, work on how they can be used to convert various types of energy and drastically reduce our total energy consumption is of considerable interest – the energy sector, in my opinion, is generally the second most important after medical.
And another important direction is the creation of various new nanomaterials. Serious progress has been made in this direction, and materials that include nanostructured elements acquire a lot of additional useful properties, for example, they become more elastic, strong, durable, and so on."
Despite the fact that these general assessments of the prospects of nanotechnology were given by Don Eigler "as much as" three years ago, they are absolutely not outdated today. Thus, nanomedicine and, more broadly, nanobiotechnology, of course, have been and remain the leading areas in the nanotechnology complex, attracting multibillion-dollar investments both at the state and corporate level. Nanomedics and nanobiologists are expected to get rid of all diseases almost soon and invent a magic recipe for eternal youth. And, perhaps, only a dry list of nanobio- and nanomedical breakthrough developments and discoveries predicted by various foresight offices in the medium and long term is capable of putting any homo sapiens who is worried about their health and the health of individuals close to them into a state of long euphoria.
As for the second, according to Eigler's classification, synthetic discipline, nanoenergy, we will limit ourselves here to mentioning only two of its key areas. Firstly, there are very high hopes today associated with the use of new nanotechnological techniques to create ultra-long-lived compact power sources (batteries and accumulators). One of the vectors of development of these techniques is associated with the search for new technological possibilities for integrating nanomaterials and nanoparticles into the traditional architecture of chargers, the other is with the development of a fundamentally new architecture based on micro– and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS). Secondly, new technologies for the use of nanoparticles in photovoltaic cells/energy sources (solar panels) are being actively developed, both for the production of these solar cells at lower temperatures and in order to increase their overall efficiency.
The third (and for some, perhaps, the first) important direction of the development of the nanocomplex is the development of new generations of electronic devices and devices that use unusual physical properties of matter and matter at the nanoscale.
For example, the global computer industry has been busy for many years feverishly searching for possible replacements for traditional CMOS technology (metal-oxide-semiconductor technology for building electronic circuits, which uses field-effect transistors with an isolated gate with channels of different conductivity) and developing the basic principles of "post-CMOS" technology based on various nanodevices of digital logic, memory and connections.
Today it is quite obvious that over the next 10-15 years, the design of microelectronic circuits will undergo significant changes. Moreover, this will be due to both the increasing complexity of using traditional technologies – lithography, etching, doping (introduction of impurities), etc. – for increasingly miniature objects, and the increasing need to effectively manage the growth of nanostructures and nanostructured materials. Ultimately, researchers need to obtain such growth control in which the electronic and structural properties of nanomaterials can be clearly controlled and used in the future in the layout of microelectronic circuits. This problem has almost been solved for many types of nanostructures, for example, for nanotubes, nanowires and quantum dots, but for electrode materials and dielectrics and for such new materials as organic nanostructures, this has yet to be done.
However, according to the developers of the roadmap, "Industrial nanosystems. Review of Technological Prospects", officially published in 2008 by order of the US Department of Energy, the key direction for the further development of the entire nanotechnology complex should be the so-called atomic precision technologies (TAT), which, in a broad sense, means any technologies using complex structures composed of atoms in a strictly defined configuration.
At the first stage, American analysts consider the basic principles of the organization of atomically precise production processes (PAT), which use a controlled sequence of operations for the construction (assembly) of structures with atomic precision. A specific example of controlling such processes is scanning probes on crystal surfaces.
Later, on the basis of TAT, the creation of industrial nanosystems with atomic precision (PNAT), which independently possess atomic accuracy, should be developed. In particular, all biological systems of PAT are already PNAT at the same time.
Smart MaterialsThe list of potentially possible products that can be obtained using atomically precise manufacturing (PAT) technologies, in particular, includes the therapeutic nanoagents of targeted delivery already mentioned above, efficient solar photovoltaic cells with high specific power hydrogen fuel cells, various single-molecular and single-electron sensors, ultra-high density computer memory devices, highly selective chemical catalysts, etc. nanomembranes, etc.
In other words, the authors of this American roadmap are trying to incorporate into the PAT almost the entire nanotechnology arsenal that is already available or is just being developed. It is difficult to say how legitimate such a terminological and methodological reduction is, and, in the end, ordinary citizens are most likely not too interested in all these conceptual add-ons.
The new nanotechnologies themselves look much clearer and more tangible, as well as new nanomaterials with unique physical properties and characteristics.
Such new nanomaterials today primarily include nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, semiconductor or metal nanowires, composites containing certain nanocomponents, as well as artificially constructed or self-organizing nanostructures (self-assembled structures of atomic precision, to use the terminology of the authors of the roadmap 2008 again).
In order not to delve into the myriad technological opportunities and prospects opening up on the nanomaterial front, we will give just two more specific examples borrowed from the RAND Corporation report.
According to American analysts, by 2020, "smart" building materials that flexibly adapt to the environment and self-regulate their properties depending on changing weather conditions can be created on the basis of nanocomposite structures. One of such promising developments is long–lived nanocrete composites that self-repair the original internal structure after various damages and self-clean their surface from external contamination.
Another cute trend from the near future is "smart" fabrics with built–in power sources, electronic sensors and sensors, as well as special nanofibers with water– and dirt-repellent properties and capable of self-smoothing. In addition to purely aesthetic advantages, which will undoubtedly attract the increased attention of ordinary consumers to them, such nanotubes should find active use in the military sphere (due to their additional protective properties and, say, the ability to artificially regulate temperature and humidity levels), as well as in hazardous industries, where it is necessary to react quickly to the effects of harmful substances and substances. In addition, the medical market seems to be very promising for such nanotubes – garments equipped with various sensors can provide invaluable assistance to doctors in remotely monitoring the health of patients.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
29.09.2009