Blog @ NanoVic - Nanotechnology Blog

Kristin and I (both from Bridge8) attended the Australian Office of Nanotechnology (AON) public forum in Adelaide on the 8th of May. Host Belinda Barr (representing Primary Industries and Resources, SA and Australian Science Communicators) was not only scientifically literate, but a barrel of laughs to boot. She unashamedly illustrated the itty-bitty scale of what we were talking about by describing the size descrepancy between the tips (blond, diameter = 15-50,000 nanometres) and the roots of her hair (dark, diameter = 50-180,000 nanometres).  Belinda also introduced us to the interactive voting gadgets provided by the AON to gauge audience responses to nanotechnology issues throughout the evening. We managed to ascertain that 80% of attendees thought that the benefits of nanotechnology outweighed the risks, and that 95% of us believed it was worth spending more money on nanotechnology research. 81% of respondants would buy a product that they knew had nanotechnology in it.  Unfortunately, the technology then failed us and we had to resort to good old-fashioned hand raising to answer questions. This raised an interesting point in itself, which was that as soon as the anonymity was removed, most respondants were too shy to publically admit their opinions on issues around nanotechnology. Surely this is a problem! Not just with nanotechnology, but with science on the whole - members of the public don’t feel informed and confident enough to discuss new and emerging technologies. This issue later emerged as a uniting theme across all 3 speakers at the forum.

Joe Shapter (School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences, Flinders University)
- “Science drives change! The public as a whole needs to be informed and involved in science”.

Georgia Miller (Friends of the Earth, Australia)
- “There is almost no recognition that the public has the right to be involved in decision-making” with respect to nanotechnology and other new technologies.
- “We are here today because we don’t want nanotechnology to repeat the mistakes associated with past technologies”.

Once Asa Janting (National Measurement Institute) reassured us that “Yes, we can measure things we can’t see!”, the evening progressed, and some interesting discussions occurred between the audience and panel members. Topics covered included:
- what is nanotechnology?;
- what can nanotechnology offer us now and in the future?;
- the public should be actively involved in the development and use of nanotechnology.

We look forward to more AON events bringing nanotechnology to the public. Next time, I would be very interested to see a breakdown of the types of people attracted to attend - were they students, scientists, university graduates, teachers? This at least would give us an idea of what societal groups are already aware that nanotechnology exists, and who we need to target to improve public access into the future.

Following on from my post on Friday, I am pleased to report that Peter did not embarrass us here at NanoVic and was in fact quite the star on “Can We Help” - I think Peter had more air time that the host Peter Rowsthorn did during the segment. My other half said he was “very impressed” which is a real compliment! It was a light-hearted but informative piece which talked about different nanotechnology applications in both the materials and bio medical fields. It can be difficult to show nanotechnology at times so anything that can help explain and promote its amazing and exciting properties is great.

Not quite sure what Peter’s next starring role will be however, perhaps his motto can be “no job too small”!

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due to fire up later this year. Dubbed ‘the biggest experiment ever’, it’s hoped the LHC will help answer the question of what the universe is made of, by recreating conditions similar to those a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, smashing particles together to generate up to 600 million collisions per second.

But will the LHC make it possible to make a black hole What about a black hole big enough to destroy the earth?!

(image from the LHC image library)

According to the information put out by CERN:

‘According to some theoretical models, tiny black holes could be produced in collisions at the LHC. They would then very quickly decay into what is known as Hawking radiation (the tinier the black hole, the faster it evaporate) which would be detected by experiments. Cosmic rays with very much more energy than that available a the LHC could also in principle produce black holes. However no evidence for such phenomena has so far been found.

You can read about physicistStephen Reucroft and John Swains thoughts on the possibility that the flick of the switch will end us all over at the Dr Knowledge Blog.

Meanwhile, the construction of the LHC is complete, and this site claims to countdown to the moment they flick the switch. I’m not sure how accurate that one is, but you can see the official programme for the cooling of the accelerator (requiring 96 tonnes of helium to cool down the LHC and fill it for first operation) here.

I hate to say it but our illustrious leader, Dr Peter Binks, is once again forging ahead with his career in television.  A program which airs on the ABC titled “Can We Help” is featuring a segment on 16 May around “what is nanotechnology”.   Peter Rowsthorn (Brett of Kath & Kim fame) visited The Edge at Eureka Skydeck which showcases switchable glass and then came to our office to take a look at some of our cool nanotechnology displays.

At the time of writing the episode is yet to air so not sure if our illustrious leader has a starring role or just ended up on the cutting room floor.  However, I am sure there will be plenty of comments to be made at our next team meeting!

Researchers at Swansea University are developing a new, eco-friendly nanomaterial that they claim could generate as much electricity as 50 wind farms.

They are investigating ways of painting solar cells, which efficient at capturing low light radiation, onto the flexible steel surfaces commonly used for cladding buildings. This could then create buildings that could power themselves!!

Researchers are working closely with a company that produces around 100 million square meters of steel building cladding a year. If all this cladding was treated with the new solar cell material, it could be generating 4,500 gigawatts of electricity a year, the equivalent of 50 wind farms!

My daughter Clem and I spent some time recently playing with “magic sand”: super-hydrophobic powder from Educational Innovations.  It is a compelling demonstration, but we hadn’t many good ideas about applications.  Just today, though, I saw that Oak Ridge National laboratory in the US have developed a new super-hydrophobic coating, which can be made cheaply (from powdered glass) and applied over large surfaces.

The thing that attracted me was the description of how the nano-structured material “maintains a microscopic layer of air on surfaces even when submerged in water, resulting in a profound change in the basic water-solid interface”. The inventor, John Simpson likes to refer to this as the “Moses effect” – and I love the name!  He also speculates about how such a layer could significantly reduce the drag experienced by a ship moving through water, potentially saving a lot of energy.

There’s more…  Another feature of this powder is its thermal insulation. Water does not enter the grain pores because the powder grains are superhydrophobic. This results in a dry breathable coating with trapped insulating air throughout. And, because the powder consists almost entirely of porous amorphous silica, it also makes a very good electrical insulator. In addition, since the powder creates a layer of air between the coated substrate and any water on the surface, water-based corrosion of the substrate is greatly reduced or entirely eliminated. 

The people of South Australia, faced with living in the driest state on the driest continent on earth, know the value of clean fresh water. Researchers at the Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of South Australia have used a nano approach to produce clean, safe drinking water. Billions of people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water, and the result is that a child dies every 15 seconds due to water-bourne disease. Methods for purifying water often require complex and expensive equipment that is difficult to maintain in areas around the world which need this technology the most.

In this study, reported in the International Journal of Nanotechnology, silica beads were coated with an active material based on a hydrocarbon with a silicon-containing anchor. This formed a nano-layer around each bead, so called Surface enegineered silica (SES). The process works by simply mixing Surface engineered silica beads with contaminated water. After stirring for an hour and filtering out the beads the water was tested. Biological molecules, pathogens such as viruses like the Polio virus, bacteria like Escherichia coli, and Cryptosporidium parvum, which is a waterborne parasite were all removed. This process was effective across the normal pH ranges of drinking water, and the researchers attribute the removal of organic material by electrostatic attraction and immobilisation on the surface of the particles.

This is a great example of how nanotechnology is not just a ‘gimmick science’ aiming to produce endless gadgets for us, but how it is a science that can genuinely have an impact on improving the lives of many people. And also a great example of Australian nanotechnology at work!

Researchers at Cornell University, New York have come up with a new use for carbon nano-structured buckyballs. The novel idea relies on the capacity of buckyballs to enhance electronic resonances at low voltage during memory creation in flash software (which most of you have in your mobile phones and digital cameras). As reported by naturenews, this is an exciting development since “the major bottleneck of the current flash memories is the voltage” (Tuo-Hung Hu, Cornell University). Put simply, buckyball-enhanced resonance means less voltage is required to create or alter memory. In terms of your hardware, this translates into [1] reduced need for peripheral circuitry (i.e. smaller devices) and [2] longer battery life spans. Sweet.

And for those of you who are too young (or old) to understand the inspiration behind this blog title, here’s a reminder from 1982. FYI, a ‘dutchie’ is a Jamaican cooking pot.  

A new television show was apparently launched in the US in April titled the “Power of Small”.   Whilst I am unable to comment on the TV show being located in Australia, the website makes for interesting listening.  A panel discusses the use of nanotechnology in the areas of Privacy, Health and Environment and small videos look at possible scenarios in each of these areas.  For instance under Privacy: would you be prepared to have a loved one tagged in order to monitor their every move? or under Health: would you like to be able to live to 150? 

There are plenty of other scenarios and they all raise interesting moral and ethical questions for everyone to think about.  Would I really want to live to 150, somehow I don’t think so!

Nature has again inspired nanotechnologists, with Chinese researchers from the Peking University and Academy of Nanotechnology and Engineering, producing a nanostructured anti-reflective film from the properties of the Cicada’s wing.

The anti-reflective property of the cicada wing, which offers camouflage to the insect, is due to a gradual refractive index profile at the interface between the wing and the air.

To replicate this profile, the researchers made a gold mould of the wing and then used the mould to transfer the pattern to film. The new reflective material could then be peeled off using tweezers and the gold mould could used for more than ten times (good news for Cicadas!!!).

The research was published in Nanotechnology.