MIRACLS PAVING WAY FOR TECHNOLOGICAL

Authors:Veena jhawar
Neha sharma

CONTENTS
• ABSTRACT
• INDRODUCTION TO NANOTECHNOLOGY
• GROWTH OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
• MEMS
• UTILITY FOG
 FUN WITH UTILITY FOG
• IMPACT OF NANOTECHNOLOGY ON MEDICINE
• ADVANCES IN MEDICINE
 SUPER MEDICINE
 LIFE EXTENSION
 CYRONICS RAISING THE DEAD
APPLCATIONS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
 MINUTE COMPUTERS
 NANOROBOTS
• UPS AND DOWNS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES

ABSTRACT
Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age, Silicon age, and what next? Nevertheless to say,
we are very well into the Nanotech age, where materials are just getting smarter
day by day. These smart materials will bring the near-perfect future that we now
all envision in our dreams.
In the not-so- distant future, machines would work
at clockwork precision and deliver the desired results with least human
intervention.
From converting sunlight into power to cleaning
oceans and beaches from oil slicks, to monitoring thermal environment, and to
sensors in the form of biochips built into the human body performing as lifesavers
by self-monitoring and guarding, life extending by cell repair etc, nanotechnology
assures us a lot more.
This paper focuses on how nanotechnology is
developing, how the idea took shape, growth and also some applications of
nanotechnology such as:

• Minute computers
• Sensor implants to monitor health
• Smart furniture
• Biochips for healthcare
• Nanorobots
INTRODUCTION TO NANOTECHNOLOGY:

Nanotechnology is defined as fabrication of devices

with atomic or molecular scale precision devices with minimum feature size less
than 100 nanometers are consider to be products of nanotechnology a nanometer
is one billionth of a meter (10^-9m)and is the unit of length that is generally most
appropriate for describing the size of single molecule. The nanoscale marks the
nebulous boundary between the classical and quantum mechanical worlds; thus,
realization of nanotechnology promises to bring revolutionary capabilities.
Fabrication of nanomachines, nanoelectronics and other nanodevices will
undoubtedly solve an enormous amount of the problems faced by mankind today.
Nanotechnology is currently in a very infantile stage.
However, we have the ability to organize matter on the atomic scale and there are
already numerous products available as a direct result of our rapidly increasing
ability to fabricate and characterize feature sizes less than 100nm. Mirrors that
don’t fog, biomimetic paint with a contact angle near 180 degrees, gene chips and
fat-soluble vitamins in aqueous beverages are some of the first manifestations of
nanotechnology. However, immanent breakthroughs in computer science and
medicine will be where the real potential of nanotechnology will first be achieved.
Nanoscience is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to
bring about mature nanotechnology. Focusing on the nanoscale intersection of
fields such as physics, biology, engineering, chemistry, computer science and
more, nanoscience is rapidly expanding. Nanotechnology centers are popping up
around the world as more funding is provided and nanotechnology market share
increases. The rapid progress is apparent by the increasing appearance of prefix
“nano” in scientific journals and the news. Thus, as we increase our ability to
fabricate computer chips with smaller features and improve our ability to cure
disease at the molecular level, nanotechnology is here.
GROWTH OF NANOTECHNOLOGY:
Groups at Bell Laboratories and IBM fabricated the
first two-dimensional quantum wells in the early 1970s. They were made by thin-
film (epitaxial) growth techniques that build a semiconductor layer one atom at a
time. The work the beginning of the development of zero-dimensional quantum
dot, which is now one of the more mature nanotechnologies with commercial
applications.
Although the concept of photonic crystal possessing a
complete bangap was fabricated by Yablonovitch in 1991. The detailed
recommendations led to a commitment by the government to provide major
funding and establish a national nanotechnology initiative. Figure.1 shows the
growth of U.S. government funding for nanotechnology and projected increase
due to the national nanotechnology initiative. Two general findings emerged form
the study.

The observation was that materials have been and can

be nanostructured for new properties and novel performance. Every property of a
material has a characteristic or critical length associated with it? For example, the
resistance of a material that results from the conduction electrons being scattered
out of the direction of flow by collisions with vibrating atoms and impurities, can
be characterized by a length called the scattering length. This length is the
average distance an electron travels before being deflected. The fundamental
physics and chemistry changes when the dimensions of a solid become
comparable to one or more of these characteristic lengths, many of which are in
the nanometer range.

A quick round up:-

Nanotechnology is molecular manufacturing or more
simply, guiding things the size of one atom or molecular with programmed
precision. It involves working with matter at the scale of one billionth of meter (1
nanometer).
Matter is composed of small atoms that are closely
bound together, making up the molecular structure, which, in turn, determines the
density of the concerned material. Since different factors such as molecular
density, malleability, ductility, and surface tension come in to play, nanosystems
have been designed in a cost effective manner that overrides these conditions and
help to create machines capable of withstanding the vagaries of the environment.
The trick is to manipulate atoms individually and
place them exactly where needed, to produce the desired structure. It is a
challenge for the scientists to understand the size, shape, strength, force, motion,
and other properties while designing nanomachines. The idea of nanotechnology
is therefore to master over the characteristics of matter in an intelligent to develop
highly efficient systems.

For an efficient Nanotechnology it should be let the fallowing things:

1. Get essential every atom in the right place.
2. Make almost any structure consistent with the laws of physics that we can
specify in molecular detail.
3. Have manufacturing costs not greatly exceeding the cost of the required raw
materials and energy.
There are two more concepts commonly associated with nanotechnology:-
a. Positional assembly
b. Self-replication.
Clearly, we would be happy with any method that
simultaneously achieved the first there objectives. However, this seems difficult
without using some form of positional assembly (to get the molecular parts in
right places) and some of self-replication (to keep the costs down).

MEMS: Micro information seekers:

Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) combines
computer with tiny mechanical devices such as sensors, valves, gears, and
actuators embedded in semiconductor chips. These elements are embedded in the
mainframe of the system for carrying out the bigger task. As the elements are
capable of carrying out the tasks, they are usually referred to as ‘smart matter’.

THE UTILITY FOG:

Using nanotechnology we can design an intelligent
polymorphic (shape changing) material that, like our body, consists of trillions of
microscopic machines. Like human cells, each machine will have a substantial
local program and information storage, but act in accordance with patterns of
global information. Unlike our cells, they will reprogram more quickly and more
widely, adapt a wider array of functions and look like spiders rather than jelly
fish.
The particular scheme for this intelligent material is
called ‘utility fog’. Utility fog consists of a mass of tiny robots. Unlike water fog,
they do not float in the air but form a lattice by holding hands in twelve
directions. Each robot has a fairly large body compared to its arm spread, and the
arms are relatively thin. Each arm is telescoping-an action driven by a relatively
powerful motor-and can be waved back and forth by relatively weak motors.
 Of course, one could design a foglet with fewer arms,
say, six, corresponding to the easier to visualize cubic lattice. The main reason for
avoiding this is that the lattice is not isotropic: it responds quit differently to
forces applied along a diagonal. Also the octect truss structure remains rigid even
if all the arms are connected to the body by hings. Since a rectangular truss would
collapse, it needs powerful motors to control the angle each arm makes with the
body. A 6-arm design would need three big motors per arm, which is a total of 18
motors. The octet structure needs only one big motor per arm, which is a total of
12 motors. The arm-waving motors need power just enough to position the arm
itself, not to exert macroscopic forces through throughout the structure.
Use of so many arms allows robots to let go briefly
to change neighbours, and still retain strength and connectivity in the structure.
The gripper at the end of each arm has one degree of freedom driven by a weak
motor. Its three fingers form an extension of the arm when closed and spread
apart at a slight angle when open. The grippers are used solely for gripping the
end of another arm in a straight line. These are designed such that two arms
approaching each other can be slightly off the line and angle, and the coupling
process is complaint. Once there coupled, however, the resulting joint is straight
and rigid. Coupling also makes power and communication connections between
the two foglets. The material properties of this mass depend on the programming
on the robots.
Fun with utility fog:
Run a distributed program that changes a certain
volume from running water to running wood at a specific time. So solid object
would seem to appear in the midst of fluid. It can just as easily disappear. Fill our
entire house with the stuff, running air in the background. Have an operating
system that has a library of programs for simulating any object we may wish to.
By giving the proper command, we can cause any object to appear anywhere at
any time. Thus we can do an angel’s job carrying a remote control shaped like a
wand with a star on the end.
Since we are embedded in the fog , it can sense every
detail our body position. It forms a ‘whole body data glove’, which we can control
with extremely subtle gestures. The foglets can carry various special sensors
ranging from simple electrodes with voltmeters to superconducting quantum
interface devices (SQIDs) and form an extremely high bandwidth polygraph.
With proper programming, the fog would almost be read our mind. This
combination extreme reactivity to control and virtually limitless creative and
operational ability reminds us of the krell machine in the movie Forbidden
planet.

IMPACT OF NANOTECHNOLOGY ON
MEDICINE:
Nanotechnology may have its biggest impact on
the medical industry. For instance, consider patients drinking medical fluids
containing nano-robots programming to attack and reconstruct the molecular
structure of cancer cells and viruses to make them harmless.
Diseases are caused largely by damage at the
molecular and cellular level. Today’s surgical tools are, at this scale, large and
crude. Modern surgery works only because cells have a remarkable ability to
regroup, bury their dead and heal over the injury. Nano-robots could also be
programmed to perform delicate surgeries. Nano-surgeons could work at a level a
thousand times more precise than the sharpest scalpel available today. By working
on such a small scale, a nano-robot could operate seamlessly without leaving the
scars that conventional surgery does.

Advances in medical technology:-

Advances in medical technology depend on our
understanding of living systems. With nano-devices, we would be able to explore
and analyze living systems in greater detail than ever before. Autonomous
molecular machines, operating in the human body, could monitor levels of
different compounds and store that information in internal memory. They could
determine both their time and location. Thus, information could be gathered about
changing conditions inside the body, and that information could be tied to both
the location and the time of collection.
These molecular machines could then be filtered out
of the blood supply and the stored information could be analyzed. This would
provide a picture of activities within healthy or injured tissue. This new
information would, in turn, provide us with deeper insights and new approaches to
curing the sick and healing the injured. Nano-robots could help us to change our
physical appearance. They could be programmed to perform cosmetic surgery,
rearranging our atoms to change our ear/nose shape, eye colors or any other
physical feature we wish. These are all the possibilities with nanotechnology.
Super medicine:-
If we combine microscopic motors, gears, levers,
bearing, plates, sensors, power and communication cables, etc with powerful
microscopic computers, we will have a new class of materials. Programmable and
microscopic, these smart materials could be used in medicine.
For example, medical nanite could patrol the body,
armed with the complete knowledge of a person’s DNA, and dispatch any foreign
invader; such cell sentinels would form immunity to not only the common cold
but also AIDS and any future viral or bacterial mutation. These nanites would do
what the plastic surgeon does, but in a better way. No pain, no bruising and results
over night. People would be able to sculpt their own bodies. These who feel they
were born the wrong sex could take on the full reproductive attributes of an
opposite sex. So men could bear children.
How about painless childbirth? With mature
nanotechnology capable of cellular manipulation, there is no reason a women
should experience torturous hours of labour for that miraculous moment of birth.
Trauma is not a great way for the newborn to enter the world either. Birth will not
be traumatic with nanotechnology. Dilation can be controlled by the mother
without pain.

Life extension:-
A finch lives two years, a parrot ninety, a gecko
one year and a Galapagos Island turtle two hundred. The difference is the genetic
programming. The geneticists are quickly unraveling human genetic code. Life is
molecular machinery, with atoms arranged in dynamic complex relationships,
controlled by DNA. If we have tools small enough to work on a machine and
understand its controlling software, machines and their behavior can be modified.
Even without nanotechnology, genetic therapies for stopping aging and even
reversal will be developed soon.
Cryonics-raising the dead:-
When a patient’s heart stops beating, but before the
structure of his brain starts to degenerate, the patient is attached to heart-lung
machine and progressively infused with ‘anti-freeze’ and other cellular stabilizers
and then his body temperature is lowered until the patient is at liquid nitrogen
temperatures. At this point, all molecular stops indefinitely and the patient is put
in storage. Later, when nanotechnology cell repair devices become available, the
fatal disease that caused ‘death’ is reversed, the anti-freeze toxicity is removed;
the patient is warmed back up alive and well.

NANOTECHNOLOGY IN ENVIRONMENT:
Nanotechnology has the potential to substantially
benefit the environment through pollution prevention, treatment and remediation.
This would include improved detection and sensing, removal of the finest
contaminant from air, water and soil, and creation of new industrial processes that
reduce waste products and are ‘green’.
.
Clean energy: - our dependence on nonrenewable resources would diminish with
nanotechnology. Many resources could infact be constructed by nano-machines.
Cutting down trees, mining coal or drilling for oil may no longer be necessary.
Resources could simply be constructed by nano-machines. Global
industrialization requires the rapid development of clean energy in order to
preserve the clean air we all breathe. And global energy catalyst markets are huge.
For instance, consider a nanostellar, a US-based company that is currently tapping
nanotechnology to develop highly efficient platinum nano-composite catalyst
solutions to increase the efficiency of automobile catalytic converters and
dramatically reduce their cost. This, according to them, is the first in series of
nano-composite catalyst products to address the energy catalyst, hydrogen fuel
cell, and solar power and battery markets.

APPLICATIONS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY:
Minute computers: - ‘smart dust’ is the brainchild of assistant professor Kris
pister. Mr. Pister termed it as ‘motes’. Motes are wireless computers small enough
to be integrated into anything to create robust wireless network. Motes act as
information seekers and report almost everything on to which they are embedded.
Essentially, smart dust is made up of thousands
of very minute sensors that can measure ambient light, heat, movement, and
sound. These would cost peanuts if mass-produced, could be plastered all over
office buildings and homes. Each room in an office building might have a
hundred or even thousand light-and temperature-sensing motes, all of which
would tie into a central computer that regulates energy usage in the building.
.
Nanorobots: - The tiny robots could be the factory workers of the future. They
would be extremely efficient and there would be much less need for extra
resources. There would be no waste materials; the nanites could break it down and
reuse it to create even more product. Every aspect of the product would be
precisely designed and created, and any flaws in the final product could be hunted
down and fixed by these machines without much extra effort. There would be no
more concerns about fuel shortages, as oil and gasoline could easily be
synthesized from parts of molecules floating in the air.
Others: - Ability to synthesize medicines at the atomic level would mean that
medicines could be created so that they only affect the needed cells, thus another
highly researched application of nanotechnology is in the area of medicine. They
dramatically reduce any side effects. If and when nanotechnology reaches the
point where we are able to build tiny machines that can manipulate atoms, they
can be used to cure many disease; by releasing a few of them into a patient, they
can hunt down any virus or cancer or anything and rearranging the atomic
makeup into something ordinary and harmless.

Ups and downs of Nanotechnology:

Nanotechnology would be beyond the control of any
single or small group of countries. Wars of the future could easily these tiny,
nearly invisible robots running around trying to dismantle any enemy forces.
 They could be used to destroy only the enemy’s
weaponry while leaving the people alive, or they could be used to kill of the
enemy themselves while leaving the technology intact. Also, nanorobot would
have a great opportunity for of course, there is a downside to nanotechnology.
First of all, by its very nature, careless mistakes to do serious damage. For
example, if a nanorobot was built and programmed to create a certain number of
copies of itself, but there was a bug in the program which prevented it from
stopping, it would continue to the program which prevented it from stopping, it
would continue to reproduce, and the entire earth could be destroyed in a manner
of days or weeks! For these reasons, nanotechnology, while having enormous
potential, can also be the most dangerous technology known to humankind.
Of course, nanotechnology is a wonderful tool, but
what would happen if this technology fell into the wrong hands? One might ask
about the legal implications of self replicating nanotechnology or even the
harmful effects of bioterrorism. The US congress is worked on it, and it has
recently passed a bill that would authorize spending of $ 2.36 billion over three
claim that nanotechnology programmes. Some people claim that nanotechnology
has severe implications: smart dust would invade our privacy and be as lethal,
disruptive, and dangerous as nuclear weapons!
The truth is that we simply don’t know where new
technologies would lead, and we can never be fully secure against scientific error
or scientific terror. Remember how a small and simple idea has revolutionized our
lives, be it the telephone or washing machine. Initially people were skeptical
about man’s landing on the moon, but today we see the useful of this wonderful
technology in the form of satellite communications.

CONCLUSION:
Nanotechnology has brought up a revolution in many fields of modern
technology such as communications, medicine, computer science, etc. and has
made things very easy for humans. Nanotechnology is growing up day-by-day,
exploring new things, which were unimaginable.
No doubt, in the coming years, nanotechnology gets developed much more,
creeping into almost every field of technology and makes wonders.
REFERENCES:

1. Introduction to nanotechnology by Charles P.Poole Jr & Frank J.

Owens
2. Electronics For You