The nanotechnology revolution is New York's 'moon shot' for the 21st century

Its from other source,

By Alain E. Kaloyeros, Contributing writer

This year marks half a century since President John F. Kennedy proclaimed a bold and ambitious dream with a deadline: a U.S. vision to land on the moon by the end of the decade.

Courtesy of CNSEResearcher wear "moon suits" to work in a cleanroom at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany. More than 250 U.S. and global corporate partners - including IBM, SEMATECH, GlobalFoundries, Tokyo Electron, Applied Materials and ASML - are engaged in advanced research and development at the college's NanoTech Complex.

“It will not be one man going to the moon…” Kennedy told a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. “...it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work together to put him there.”

Fifty years later, we are in the early stages of the “moon shot” of the 21st century: the nanotechnology revolution. Rather than pursuing a single dream, however, nanotechnology is advancing a host of exciting “dreams with a deadline” by enabling innovators to manage individual atoms and, as a result, catalyzing novel discoveries and exciting products that are transforming the industrial and social landscape.

Early applications are everywhere: breakthroughs that allow ultrafast communications around the corner and the world; game-changing treatments and cures for disease; groundbreaking innovations to enable clean and environmentally friendly energy; and enhanced protection for American citizens at home, and our soldiers abroad.

Alain E. Kaloyeros, Ph.D., is professor, senior vice president and chief executive officer of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at theState University at Albany. 

Just as importantly, the emergence of nanotechnology is creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for economic prosperity. Amid projections by Global Industry Analysts Inc. that nanotechnology will be a $2.4 trillion industry by 2015, it is the regions, states and countries that lead in this pioneering field that will reap its financial rewards.

It is in this arena that New York holds a global competitive advantage, by virtue of a groundbreaking and successful nanotechnology paradigm that embodies JFK’s view that “all of us must work together.” Public-private partnerships, combining government, academia and industry, are being deployed across New York to elevate education, accelerate innovation, create high-tech employment, and generate economic growth.

The first fruit of this strategy is the establishment of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, which has generated $7 billion in investment and turned every dollar of public funding into seven dollars of private investment. Employment at CNSE has risen from 72 in 2001 to over 2,500 today, leading the Capital Region’s designation by the Tech America Foundation as the nation’s third fastest-growing high-tech job market, and contributing to creation and retention of 12,500 nanotechnology jobs statewide.

That momentum is now spreading statewide, including in Central New York, through a groundbreaking partnership that unites Lockheed Martin Corp. and CenterState CEO with CNSE. Catalyzed by a New York State Assembly investment of $28 million, this $250 million initiative will bring a long-vacant, former General Electric laboratory at Electronics Park in Salina back to life as a cutting-edge nanotechnology research and development facility. The project will create 250 new jobs, help to retain over 2,000 more at Lockheed Martin, and spur new education and workforce training programs in the North Syracuse and Liverpool School Districts.

This is just the beginning. The strategic vision outlined in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's “New York Works” plan for economic revitalization, together with his resolute and resourceful leadership, represents a 21st century version of JFK’s clarion call for focused and relentless pursuit of global leadership.

So, too, does the visionary economic development blueprint and proactive support of the State Assembly, under the leadership of Speaker Sheldon Silver, through which CNSE was established as a hub for integrated education, innovation and economic outreach.

“Disneyland will never be completed,” Walt Disney once said. “It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Similarly, there is no end zone for nanotechnology, and unleashing its power will afford New York the opportunity to create economic prosperity for generations to come.

The Smallest Computing Systems

A team led by Charles Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard, and Shamik Das, lead engineer in MITRE's nanosystems group, has designed and built a reprogrammable circuit out of nanowire transistors. Several tiles wired together would make the first scalable nanowire computer, says Lieber. Such a device could run inside microscopic, implantable biosensors, and ultra-low-power environmental or structural sensors, say the researchers.

Working wires: A scanning electron microscope image (top) shows a programmable nanowire circuit. This false-colored scanning electron microscope image (bottom) shows a nanowire processor tile superimposed on top of the architecture used to design the circuit. Credit: Lieber Group, Harvard University

For more than a decade, nanowires and nanotubes have promised to shrink computing to scales impossible to achieve with traditional semiconductor materials. But there have been doubts about the practicality of nanowires and nanotubes as actual computing systems. "There had been little progress in terms of increasing the complexity of circuits," says Lieber.

One big problem has been reproducing structures made from nanowires and nanotubes reliably. Each structure needs to be virtually identical to ensure that a circuit operates as intended. But now, says Lieber, some of those problems are being solved. His group, in particular, has developed ways to produce identical nanowires in bulk. Because of this, he and colleagues at MITRE have been able to design a nanowire circuit architecture that has the potential to scale up. The details are published in the current issue of Nature.Traditional chips are made using a so-called top-down approach in which a design is essentially exposed like a photograph onto a semiconductor wafer, and excess material is etched away. In contrast, a bottom-up approach is used to make the nanowire circuits. This means they can be deposited on various types of surfaces, and can be made more compact. "You want [sensor] systems that are physically small," says James Klemic, nanotechnology laboratory director at MITRE. "Right now, your only option is to use a chip that dwarfs the sensor."

To make the new nanowire circuit, researchers deposited lines of nanowires, made of a germanium core and silicon shell, on a substrate and crossed them with lines of metal electrodes to create a grid. The points where the nanowires and electrodes intersect act as a transistor that can be turned on and off independently. The researchers made a single tile, with an area of 960 square microns containing 496 functional transistors. It is designed to wire to other tiles so that the transistors, in aggregate, could act as complex logic gates for processing or memory.

The nanowire transistors maintain their state-on or off—regardless of whether the power is on. This gives it an instant-on capability, important for low-power sensors that might need to collect data only sporadically and also need to conserve power.

According to Das, the circuits could also be 10 times more power-efficient than circuits made of traditional materials. One reason is the nanowire's electrical properties, which don't allow electric current to leak, unlike traditional transistors. Another reason is that the circuit design uses capacitive connections instead of resistive ones, which are less efficient. "We don't burn a lot of power driving resistors," says Das.

"This is a significant milestone on several fronts," says André DeHon, professor of electrical and system engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Reprogrammable transistors made of nanowires are "the building block I was hoping for," he says.

The researchers' work represents "a leap forward in complexity and function of circuits built from the bottom up," says Zhong Lin Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. It shows that the bottom-up method for manufacturing "can yield nanoprocessors and other integrated systems of the future," he says.

More work needs to be done to make nanowire processors practical for use in electronics systems, Lieber says. His group needs to demonstrate thousands of transistors on a tile—many times more than the current 496 transistors his group has so far achieved. In addition, they need to scale up to multiple tiles. The researchers are in the process of finding the best way to link a 16-tile system together. Lieber says that, realistically, manufacturing these circuits is still several years down the road.SOURCE:technologyreview.in

NANO TUBES

Nanotube:

"Conceptually, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can be considered to be formed by the rolling of a single layer of graphite (called a graphene layer) into a seamless cylinder. A multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) can similarly be considered to be a coaxial assembly of cylinders of SWCNTs, like a Russian doll, one within another; the separation between tubes is about equal to that between the layers in natural graphite. Hence, nanotubes are one-dimensional objects with a well-defined direction along the nanotube axis that is analogous to the in-plane directions of graphite."
—M. S. Dresselhaus, Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Copyright Prof. Vincent H. Crespi Department of Physics Pennsylvania State University.

A one dimensional fullerene (a convex cage of atoms with only hexagonal and/or pentagonal faces) with a cylindrical shape. Carbon nanotubes discovered in 1991 by Sumio Iijima resemble rolled up graphite, although they can not really be made that way. Depending on the direction that the tubes appear to have been rolled (quantified by the 'chiral vector'), they are known to act as conductors or semiconductors. Nanotubes are a proving to be useful as molecular components for nanotechnology. [Encyclopedia Nanotech]

Strictly speaking, any tube with nanoscale dimensions, but generally used to refer to carbon nanotubes, which are sheets of graphite rolled up to make a tube. A commonly mentioned non-carbon variety is made of boron nitride, another is silicon. These noncarbon nanotubes are most often referred to as nanowires. The dimensions are variable (down to 0.4 nm in diameter) and you can also get nanotubes within nanotubes, leading to a distinction between multi-walled and single-walled nanotubes. Apart from remarkable tensile strength, nanotubes exhibit varying electrical properties (depending on the way the graphite structure spirals around the tube, and other factors, such as doping), and can be superconducting, insulating, semiconducting or conducting (metallic). [CMP]

Nanotubes can be either electrically conductive or semiconductive, depending on their helicity, leading to nanoscale wires and electrical components. These one-dimensional fibers exhibit electrical conductivity as high as copper, thermal conductivity as high as diamond, strength 100 times greater than steel at one sixth the weight, and high strain to failure. NASA JSC - Carbon Nanotubes

A nanotube's chiral angle--the angle between the axis of its hexagonal pattern and the axis of the tube--determines whether the tube is metallic or semiconducting. Nanotubes Under Stress

A graphene sheet can be rolled more than one way, producing different types of carbon nanotubes. The three main types are armchair, zig-zag, and chiral. Examples

 Copyright Professor Charles M. Lieber Group
And an excellent description of Carbon Nanotube Tips for Atomic Force Microscopy

Carbon nanotubes possess many unique properties which make them ideal AFM probes. Their high aspect ratio provides faithful imaging of deep trenches, while good resolution is retained due to their nanometer-scale diameter. These geometrical factors also lead to reduced tip-sample adhesion, which allows gentler imaging. Nanotubes elastically buckle rather than break when deformed, which results in highly robust probes. They are electrically conductive, which allows their use in STM and EFM (electric force microscopy), and they can be modified at their ends with specific chemical or biological groups for high resolution functional imaging. Professor Charles M. Lieber Group

CNT exhibits extraordinary mechanical properties: the Young's modulus is over 1 Tera Pascal. It is stiff as diamond. The estimated tensile strength is 200 Giga Pascal. These properties are ideal for reinforced composites, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). Center for Nanotechnology | Gallery

Carbon Nanotube Transistors exploit the fact that nm- scale nanotubes (NT) are ready-made molecular wires and can be rendered into a conducting, semiconducting, or insulating state, which make them valuable for future nanocomputer design. ... Carbon nanotubes are quite popular now for their prospective electrical, thermal, and even selective-chemistry applications. Physics News 590, May 21, 2002

Many potential applications have been proposed for carbon nanotubes, including conductive and high-strength composites; energy storage and energy conversion devices; sensors; field emission displays and radiation sources; hydrogen storage media; and nanometer-sized semiconductor devices, probes, and interconnects. Some of these applications are now realized in products. Others are demonstrated in early to advanced devices, and one, hydrogen storage, is clouded by controversy. Nanotube cost, polydispersity in nanotube type, and limitations in processing and assembly methods are important barriers for some applications of single-walled nanotubes. Carbon Nanotubes—the Route Toward Applications Ray H. Baughman, Anvar A. Zakhidov, Walt A. de Heer

AKA: Multi-wall Carbon Nanotubes (MWNTs), Single-wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNs), (5, 5) armchair nanotube, (9, 0) zigzag nanotube, and (10, 5) chiral nanotube. Also, single-wall carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNFETs). See Nanotubes, Nanocones, and Nanosheets: an applet that lets you control in 3D the components and form elements. [Steffen Weber, PhD. See his VRML gallery of Fullerenes]. Also carbon nanowalls.

carbon nanotube with metal-semiconductor junction

structure of a multi-walled nanotube

Click image to enlarge
Copyright Alain Rochefort Assistant Professor Engineering Physics Department,
Nanostructure Group, Center for Research on Computation and its Applications (CERCA).

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Bucky Ball:

"It is the roundest and most symmetrical large molecule known to man. Buckministerfullerine continues to astonish with one amazing property after another. Named after American architect R. Buckminister Fuller who designed a geodesic dome with the same fundamental symmetry, C60 is the third major form of pure carbon; graphite and diamond are the other two." Bucky Balls - Andy Gion.

AKA: C60 molecules & buckminsterfullerene. Molecules made up of 60 carbon atoms arranged in a series of interlocking hexagons and pentagons, forming a structure that looks similar to a soccer ball [Steffen Weber, PhD.]. C60 is actually a "truncated icosahedron", consisting of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons. It was discovered in 1985 by Professor Sir Harry Kroto, and two Rice University professors, chemists Dr. Richard E. Smalley and Dr. Robert F. Curl Jr., [for which they were jointly awarded the 1996 Nobel Lauriate for chemistry] and is the only molecule composed of a single element to form a hollow spheroid [which gives the potential for filling it, and using it for novel drug-delivery systems. See Structure of a New Family of Buckyballs Created].

"The buckyball, being the roundest of round molecules, is also quite resistant to high speed collisions. In fact, the buckyball can withstand slamming into a stainless steel plate at 15,000 mph, merely bouncing back, unharmed. When compressed to 70 percent of its original size, the buckyball becomes more than twice as hard as its cousin, diamond." The Buckyball - Rodrigo de Almeida Siqueira.

AKA: Endohedral fullerenes, carbon cages. 

Click to enlarge Copyright Oliver Kreylos, Center for Image Processing and Integrated Computing (CIPIC), University of California, Davis.

Click to enlarge Copyright Dr. Roger C. Wagner, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Delaware.

Click to enlarge Copyright ORNL. See Materials by Computational Design and Atomistic Simulations. This figure presents a visualization of a nanohydraulic piston. The model consists of a Carbon nanotube (blue), Helium atoms (green), and a "Buckyball" molecule. It is used to explore the stability of the system.

RDS to announce award for nanotech

NOMINATIONS HAVE opened for a new award that highlights research discoveries being made by scientists here and Irish scientists abroad working in the nanotechnology area.

Ireland is currently ranked eighth in the world in research citations related to nanotechnology, a reflection of a significant level of involvement. Nanotechnology is the study of objects a millionth of a metre or less in size.

The Prize Lecture for Nanoscience award will be announced today during Nanoweek by the RDS, which has organised it in partnership with Intel Ireland with the support of The Irish Times.

The prize will be awarded annually, alternating between a scientist based in Ireland and an Irish scientist based abroad. The 2011 award will be presented to a scientist based in Ireland.

Those eligible are scientists working in nanoscience and related fields such as advanced materials, electronics and biology. The winner will receive an RDS bronze medal and will be expected to give a public lecture.

“This field of research has the potential to revolutionise the future of industry in Ireland and add significant value to our existing strengths in these areas,” said RDS president Fonsie Mealy.

General manager of Intel Ireland Eamonn Sinnott, vice president of its technology manufacturing group, said Intel welcomed the award programme. “Nanoscience is not only a key enabling technology for the semiconductor industry but also will underpin many other types of industries in Ireland and across the globe, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and others,” he said.

The closing date for receipt of nominations is Tuesday, March 1st. The winner will be announced in April, with the presentation of the award at the public lecture at the RDS in May. Full details and online nomination form are available at rds.ie/nanoscience

Startup Boasts Better Lithium Batteries

A California company called Envia Systems is developing a battery that promises to store twice the energy of lithium-ion batteries—the kind typically used in electric cars.

 A new cathode design could result in batteries that can store double the amount possible with current electric car batteries.

Envia has received investment from General Motors, which could be one of the biggest buyers of lithium-ion batteries for cars in coming years thanks to a planned lineup of plug-in cars including the Chevy Volt. The automaker's venture capital arm, GM Ventures, announced a $7 million investment in the startup last month.

Envia says its batteries could lower the cost of plug-in vehicles by reducing the need for costly metals, and by cutting the number of cells needed to store a given amount of energy in a vehicle's battery pack. In current batteries, an imbalance exists between the two electrodes: the anodes are equipped to accept far more charge than cathodes are able to supply. Envia's batteries use a cathode that is rich in manganese, which allows it to hold more charge.

Elton Cairns, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, says a manganese-based cathode should indeed help to reduce battery costs. "Most other oxide cells have cobalt in them, which is expensive," he says. There are, however, already some batteries that little or no cobalt.Envia's recipe involves high-capacity, manganese-rich cathodes with a layered-layered composite structure (made with two different layered components) based on technology licensed from Argonne National Laboratory.

According to GM Ventures president Jon Lauckner,  GM, Envia, and other companies have licensed different patents from one "family" of intellectual property related to manganese-rich layered-layered composite-cathode technology.

The current version of GM's Volt uses lithium-ion batteries made with lithium-manganese spinel cathodes ("spinel" refers to the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in the material). The cathode material has active components, through which lithium ions move when the battery is charged or discharged, and inactive ones, which help stabilize the active material and extend the life of the battery—a vital quality in electric-car batteries.

Envia's cathode uses relatively inexpensive materials. Although the "cost is in the same ballpark as what cell makers use today," says Lauckner, the material could deliver a one-third improvement in energy density at the cell level compared to what's on the market today. This figure is based on data from a prototype that Envia designed for a specific GM vehicle application.  

Envia has also begun working on more higher energy density anodes, with a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Last year, in partnership with Argonne, Envia set out to develop silicon-carbon nanocomposite anodes with the idea of integrating them with high-capacity cathodes, and devising processes for scaling up production to high volumes.

Steel nanotechnology can reduce the weight of our cars

The world's largest steel maker, ArcelorMital, says it has come up with a new kind of steel that the world has never seen before. Thanks to nanotechnology, the company says automakers can now match the weight of aluminum cars, but do it in steel at far lower cost.

It can take 188 pounds out of the body-in-white of a car... but total weight savings could be even bigger.

Specifically, ArcelorMital says it can take 188 pounds out of the body-in-white of a car. The body-in-white, or BIW, refers to the basic structure of a car, including the doors, hood and deck lid. That's a big number. By taking so much weight out of the structure, other components such as the powertrain, drivetrain, brakes, etc. can be downsized as well. In other words, the total weight savings could be even bigger.

ArcelorMital is already showing this new kind of steel to automakers. It isn't yet ready to publicly divulge any of the technical aspects of the steel or how it's using nanotechnology to make it. The company says we're still two to three years away before we get those kinds of details. And that's about the time we'll see this steel show up in production. No word yet on which car company may be the first to use it, but the rumor on the street is that Ford is all over this technology.

The nano steel itself is not inherently lighter, but it's so strong that automakers can use thinner gauges and that's where part of the weight savings comes from. Another part of the weight savings comes from not having to use additional brackets, gussets or panels to strengthen the structure.

For example, A-pillars are becoming so big these days due to roof crush standards that they are actually becoming a safety hazard. The fat A-pillars can partially block your view to side traffic or pedestrians. But with this nano steel, A-pillars could be made much thinner with no sacrifice to structure or safety.

The nano steel does require a newer manufacturing technique called hot stamping.

Nor is this steel cheaper than other grades of steel. In fact, it's probably a little bit more expensive. But by eliminating all those brackets and extra panels, the total tooling cost of a car goes down, and that's where the costs savings comes from.

To get the maximum 188-pound reduction in the BIW, an automaker would have to design-in the nano steel's capabilities using a clean sheet approach. But ArcelorMittal says that some applications, especially cross-members, lend themselves to running changes on existing designs.

The nano steel does require a newer manufacturing technique called hot stamping. That's where automakers heat up the steel blanks that go into a stamping press to the point where they're literally glowing red. Then they feed the red hot blanks into a press and stamp them into body panels. Heating up the steel makes it much more pliable and enables it to be formed into more complex shapes. Actually, this is a fairly common process already in use today, used to form the high-strength steels that have been available for the last decade and a half. So, while the nano steel requires hot stamping, it's not as if automakers need to make a big investment in manufacturing technology.

Covitic aluminum somehow impregnates aluminum with carbon fiber.

It's very impressive to see the steel industry delve into new technology to keep its product relevant. Aluminum, magnesium and composites definitely pose a competitive threat to steel. But they're also considerably more expensive, are not as easily repaired in most body shops, and require considerably more energy to recycle. That's why they've not found widespread use in cars, or at least not as widespread as steel.

And yet, I've heard tantalizing whispers of the new breakthrough coming in aluminum. It's called covitic aluminum, where somehow they impregnate aluminum with carbon fiber. There, now you know about as much of it as I do.

I'm pretty sure we'll get some sort of announcement later this year about covitic aluminum. But for right now at least, this nano steel seems to be the latest word in materials technology.

Reactors at room temperature

On Feb. 6, Chennai:

 It may be still in the realm of science fiction for many but a nanotechnology expert has claimed that green, clean, safe and cheap energy can be produced using a low energy nuclear reactor in room temperature.

“One does not need materials like uranium, plutonium or thorium or for that matter any kind of reactors,” said Prof David Nagel, research professor, micro and nano technologies, George Washington University, USA. “There will not be any radiation or radioactive waste in this mode of power generation.”

Prof Nagel was addressing students and faculty attending the tutorial school on “Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” in IIT Madras on Saturday.

According to him, two Italian scientists, Prof Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi, had demonstrated a 10 KW LENR reactor at Bologna on January 14.

“But the International Patent Office rejected their application for patent because the authorities were not convinced about the feasibility of the LENR,” he said. “Scientists who have made breakthroughs in LENR are reluctant to come out in the open because of the fear that they may be deprived of their intellectual property rights.”

But he refused to set a dateline for the commercial realisation of this revolutionary reactor. “It will become a reality but I don’t know when,” said Prof Nagel.

More than 60 students and teachers drawn from all over the country attended the session were addressed by a galaxy of scientists including Michael McKubre, Dr Yashuhiro Iwamura and Prof Vladimir Vystoskii.

The next six days will see Chennai playing host to the international conference on condensed matter nuclear science.

Russia's nanotechnology head to meet Indian industrial magnates

Head of the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation (Rosnano) Anatoly Chubais arrived in India on Monday on a five-day visit to hold talks with chiefs of industry.

On Monday, Chubais is due to meet with members of the Confederation of Indian Industry and officials, as well as visit the Center for Nanotechnology Research of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Russian official will visit the southeastern city of Bangalore, known as India's Silicon Valley to talk to representatives of India's aircraft construction corporation Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), the Indian Space Research Organization and the Defense Research and Development Organization and other companies.

On Thursday and Friday, Chubais will visit the capital, New Delhi and the northern city of Chandigarh, which hosts the research laboratories of India's largest pharmaceutical companies.

During the visit, Chubais will also visit research institutions focusing on energy sufficiency and meet with representatives of the country's governmental Department of Science and Technology and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made the modernization of Russia's oil-dependent economy a cornerstone of his domestic policies, and the creation of a hi-tech research hub is under way in the town of Skolkovo, near Moscow.

NEW DELHI, February 7 (RIA Novosti)

Nanotechnology and automotive manufacturing

Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at a molecular scale. This technology is indispensable because many common substances have different and useful properties when reduced in size. It promises to improve the performance of existing technologies significantly.

“Nanotechnology is expected to be a key driver for innovation in the automotive industry,” says Wijia Xie, an industry analyst from research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

“The technology has a wide variety of applications in many vehicle components, including the car body, windows, tires, control system, catalytic converter, and engine systems,” Xie adds.

“The application of nanotechnology is usually done so as to significantly improve the safety, comfort, efficiency and eco-friendliness of future generation cars.”

Indeed, there are a number of processes and products enhanced by nanomaterials that are making an impact in the automotive industry.

These include nanocomposites incorporating a variety of materials for structural reinforcement and safety; nanoparticle catalysts for fuel economy; nanoadditives for lubricants; and easy-clean, anti-fogging, anti-abrasion, anti-corrosion and self-repairing coatings. Companies like Toyota, General Motors, Ford and Rolls-Royce are all taking a lead in developing technologies in these areas.

Over the past decade, one of the most significant technological developments in the plastics industry has been in the use of nanocomposite materials.

Nanocomposites are stiffer, lighter and less brittle in cold temperatures than conventional plastics. They exhibit properties that are greatly different from macroscopic composites and have been shown to yield multiple benefits at relatively low cost compared to traditional methods of plastic enhancement, such as polymerisation.

“Exatec and DuPont developed scratch-resistant coatings for cars with polymer nanocomposite or metal oxide nanoparticles that provide excellent anti-scratch properties against hard-object impacts,” says Xie.

In 2002, General Motors used nanocomposite technology with thermoplastic olefins, thus opening up a whole new area of commercialisation.

The advanced thermoplastic nanocomposite part was used on the maker’s GMC Safari and Chevrolet Astro mid-size vans. It was the first automotive exterior application of this lightweight, high-performance and affordable material. Other automotive parts that have been developed from the material include exterior door and rear quarter panels. The plastic enables these items to spring back into shape following low-speed impacts.

Usage
Nanoparticle technology is being used in the automotive industry to protect engines and enable them to perform better.

Ford, for example, is using a device called the Local Electrode Atom Probe to conduct research into making metals and plastics lighter and stronger. The device works at the atomic scale and is useful for removing atoms from metallic surfaces and locating the atom position on those surfaces.

Nanoparticles are also being used as ‘fillers’ for metals and plastics to increase the strength of produced materials and reduce their weight in the process. Ford’s ‘Atoms to Engines’ team looked at the structure of cast aluminium alloys at near atomic levels. A detailed analysis of the structure, property and process relationship of the aluminium alloy engine blocks led to reduced engine weight, which in turn resulted in increased fuel efficiency.

Researchers are looking into ways in which Nanoparticles can be added to glass and paints to enable them to better withstand radiation and provide self-cleaning mechanisms.

Nanostructured surfaces result in improved paint adhesion and colour durability. It is no surprise then the Ford Motor Company has predicted that by 2015, nanomaterials will be used in 70 percent of its production materials. The move could likely position the company as a leader of the automotive industry once again. This is how big it is.

Clean technology
Nanotechnology’s many applications in clean technology range from solar panels to EV batteries. A report from Lux Research sees a $29 billion clean tech nanotechnology market in 2015.

Considering its features and what it has to offer, there seems no doubt that potential for nanotechnology in the manufacturing processes of electric cars is immense.
To exemplify, Lithium ion batteries are currently being intensively developed across the world for use in electric vehicles. Nanotechnology promises to improve the performance and the life-times of these batteries.

Additionally, it also has the potential to enhance the energy and power density, shorten the recharge time, as well as decrease the size and weight while improving safety and stability of the batteries.

“Nanotechnologies can further enable some sci-fi concepts for future vehicles, such as collisionless auto-driving cars, shape-shifting cars, and solar power cars. Its potential truly is astounding,” points out Xie.