Other Uses for Nanotechnology

Photo courtesy Sandia National Laboratories Lauren Rohwer displays the two solid-state light-emitting devices using quantum dots her team has developed. One is blue and the other is white.

What else will scientists be able to do with nanotechnology? It really is amazing when you think about it. For example, you know that steel is strong. And you probably have used something like a graphite or KEVLARŪ tennis racket that is even stronger and lighter than steel. Nanotechnology, in the form of carbon nanotubes, will create even stronger stuff -- possibly 100 times stronger than normal graphite with about the same weight. If you're wondering what a carbon nanotube is, imagine taking a sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick. Then you roll it into the smallest tube possible. That is a carbon nanotube. It has a diameter of about 1.3 nanometers.

Another type of nanotechnology is called a quantum dot. These dots are tiny -- only about 5 nanometers across. They contain a handful of atoms, and those atoms are chosen so that they are very good at absorbing or creating light. By using quantum dots, scientists will be able to make a completely new type of light bulb. They will also be able to create solar cells that are much cheaper than today's solar cells.

Speaking of solar cells, there is another way that nanotechnology should be able to help with sunlight. For many years, scientists have been trying to find a cheap way for sunlight to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting hydrogen would then be used to power fuel cells in cars and trucks. With luck, nanotechnology will crack that problem and make cheap hydrogen a reality.

There will even be nanotechnology inside your body. One of the most interesting ways to use nanotechnology is to make new drugs that can latch on to diseased cells. Let's say that there is a cancer tumor in your body. Right now, doctors give you a drug that can kill the tumor. That's called chemotherapy. The problem is that the drug flows throughout your body, and it kills lots of other things too. Some scientists believe it eventually will be possible to use nanotechnology to create special nanocages that contain drug molecules. These nano-caged drugs will attach only to tumor cells. That way, the tumor is the only thing killed by the drug.

Teeny Tiny Machines Although they aren't quite at the nano level yet, scientists are making machines at the micro level now. They have created tiny motors and gears, for example, and can use them to move things around. You actually have one of these micro-machines in your car right now. The airbag in your car needs to sense a collision. It uses a tiny weight, much smaller than a grain of salt, to do it. When the car collides with something, the tiny weight moves and a tiny capacitor senses the movement. Bam -- in less than a millisecond your airbag is popping out!

And then there is the world of computing, where nanotechnology should really shine. Computers have been made of silicon for many years, but now we are getting to the point where we can't make silicon computers much smaller. Nanotech will create a whole new kind of transistor that is smaller, faster and uses less power than any transistor seen today. That means computers will get a lot smaller and faster. And these computers will be able to have a lot more memory. Because of nanotechnology, video games, and lots of other applications, will keep getting better and better while computers become less and less expensive.