Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology and Manufacturing

Four years ago, words like “impossible,” “futuristic,” and “science fiction” filled discussions about nanotechnology. Since the announcement of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000, though, worldwide investment in nano research and development has raced forward, with $8 billion invested in 2004 alone. That kind of growth has leaders at major companies sitting up and [...]

NANOTECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION

Truly revolutionary nanotechnology products, materials and applications, such as nanorobotics, are years in the future (some say only a few years; some say many years). What qualifies as “nanotechnology” today is basic research and development that is happening in laboratories all over the world. “Nanotechnology” products that are on the market today are mostly gradually [...]

Nanotechnology for Sustainable Economy

The EuroNanoForum 2009 international nanotechnology conference took place from 2nd to 5th June 2009 in the Prague Congress Centre, organized by the Technology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, as an event of the Czech Presidency and under the auspices of the Czech Ministry for Education Youth and Sports. It has [...]

Industrial nanotechnology processes getting closer

For years now, nanotechnology researchers have been promising us carbon nanotubes as the basis for numerous breakthrough applications such as multifunctional high-strength fibres, coatings and transparent conducting films. Not to mention as a cure for cancer (see“Horseradish, carbon nanotubes and cancer therapy”) and a solution to the energy crisis. However, while the thermal, electrical and [...]

Multifunctional nanotechnology device for integrated, cell-based nanotherapy

One of the promises of medical nanotechnology is a drug-delivery nanodevice that can image, target, and deliver drugs to a specific cancer location inside the body and monitor and if necessary adjust the drug release at the target location. Researchers in Taiwan have now designed a nanodevice that comes pretty close to this vision.

“We have [...]

Pushing the envelope in atomic force microscopy

(Nanowerk Spotlight – Application Note) Over the past decade, Atomic Force/Scanning Probe Microscopy (AFM/SPM) has emerged as the leading tool for investigations at the nanoscale – doing everything from imaging, to compositional differentiation, to explorations of molecular forces. But aside from some interesting tweaks, add-ons and repackaging, the field has seen no fundamentally new instruments [...]