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Srinagar: The 7th edition of biennial International Conference on Nanotechnology for Better Living (NBL-21) is being organized by National Institute of Technology Srinagar under the aegis of Materials Research Society of India (MRSI) in association with Anna University, SKUAST-K, NIT Mizoram, SSM College of Engineering, SKIMS, Srinagar, Mahatma Gandhi University, Sathyabama, IIT Madras, Higher Education J & K and many more institutions within and abroad from 07-11 April, 2021, which marks the birth anniversary of a famous microbiologist Prof. James Watson- all rolled in one. The scientific event is expected to provide a vibrant platform to present and discuss path breaking research ideas in nanotechnologies and shall be an interface between academia and industries. The scientific event being organized during the worst pandemic, which is our common sorrow and common pain, will mostly focus on Nano-Coatings and Nano-sprays for infectious and inflammatory diseases, shall be a fabulous fusion of biological, chemical, physical, natural, agricultural and engineering sciences. The partner states (J&K and Tamil Nadu) shall take many more initiatives in science and technology for the benefit of our students, scholars and faculty, an initiative taken by central government.

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7th edition of biennial International Conference on Nanotechnology for Better Living (NBL-21) is being organized by NIT Srinagar - India Education...

When we hear the word nanotechnology we tend to envision tiny armies of robots or sci-fi movies, but this science that works with materials at the nano-scale level, encompasses a wide range of every day applications, all meant to create materials that offer new solutions to make your life better.

One area where nanotech is providing money saving and sustainable benefits is in products for the home. Here are a few technologies currently available:

1. Nansulate Home Protect - Clear liquid insulation. This patented technology, in existence since 2004, has been used on international airports and Naval bases. It offers a paint-on solution to increasing insulation and energy efficiency in an environmentally friendly nanocoating that inhibits heat transfer. Customers report saving between 20%-40% on energy costs. Pricing: 50 cents per S.F. at recommended 3-coat coverage. www. nansulate.com/homeprotect.htm

2. Nano-Tex - High performance fabrics. This innovation in fabric technology has been available since 1998, and is used in multiple consumer items such as workout clothes that keep you dryer, stain repellent furniture fabrics, and sheet sets that keep you cool and comfortable. The innovations include moisture control, odor control, stain resistance, and wrinkle resistance. Pricing varies according to product. http://www.nano-tex.com.

3. NanoGuard - Behr paint technology. Announced in 2007, this technology is used to provide multiple qualities to both exterior and interior paints. The Premium Plus Ultra uses an interlocking molecular structure to offer a denser, more durable paint film. When dry, the paint forms a protective shell that resists damage from sunlight, moisture, stains and dirt. Pricing: approximately 15 cents per S.F. if doing 1-coat. http://www.behr.com.

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Nanotechnology Products to Make Your Life Better

30-12-2011 00:27 A valuable lecture delivered by Mr. J. Akilavasan, Research Assistant, IFS. this is part 1 of 4

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Nanotechnology for a Better Future.Part 1 - Mr. J.Akilavasan - SSP2011 - IFSlk - Video

Illustration of the core of the photonic cavity that was fabricated as two halves that assembled themselves into one unit. The cavity confines light inside the gap, which is only a few atoms wide as indicated in the field of view of the magnifying glass. Credit: Thor A. S. Weis

In a new Nature paper, two nanotechnology approaches converge by employing a new generation of fabrication technology. It combines the scalability of semiconductor technology with the atomic dimensions enabled by self-assembly.

A central goal in quantum optics and photonics is to increase the strength of the interaction between light and matter to produce, e.g., better photodetectors or quantum light sources. The best way to do that is to use optical resonators that store light for a long time, making it interact more strongly with matter. If the resonator is also very small, such that light is squeezed into a tiny region of space, the interaction is enhanced even further. The ideal resonator would store light for a long time in a region at the size of a single atom.

Physicists and engineers have struggled for decades with how small optical resonators can be made without making them very lossy, which is equivalent to asking how small you can make a semiconductor device. The semiconductor industrys roadmap for the next 15 years predicts that the smallest possible width of a semiconductor structure will be no less than 8 nm, which is several tens of atoms wide.

The self-assembled cavity can be integrated into larger self-assembled components for routing light around an optical chip. The figure shows the optical cavity embedded in a circuit containing multiple self-assembled elements. Credit: Thor A. S. Weis

The team behind a new paper in Nature, Associate Professor Sren Stobbe and his colleagues at DTU Electro demonstrated 8 nm cavities last year, but now they propose and demonstrate a novel approach to fabricate a self-assembling cavity with an air void at the scale of a few atoms. Their paper Self-assembled photonic cavities with atomic-scale confinement detailing the results is published today (December 6) in the journal Nature.

To briefly explain the experiment, two halves of silicon structures are suspended on springs, although in the first step, the silicon device is firmly attached to a layer of glass. The devices are made by conventional semiconductor technology, so the two halves are a few tens of nanometers apart. Upon selective etching of the glass, the structure is released and now only suspended by the springs, and because the two halves are fabricated so close to each other, they attract due to surface forces. By carefully engineering the design of the silicon structures, the result is a self-assembled resonator with bowtie-shaped gaps at the atomic scale surrounded by silicon mirrors.

FACT BOX: Surface forces

There are four known fundamental forces: Gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces. Besides the forces due to static configurations, e.g., the attractive electromagnetic force between positively and negatively charged particles, there can also be forces due to fluctuations. Such fluctuations may be either thermal or quantum in origin, and they give rise to surface forces such as the van der Waals force and the Casimir force which act at different length scales but are rooted in the same underlying physics. Other mechanisms, such as electrostatic surface charges, can add to the net surface force. For example, geckos exploit surface forces to cling to walls and ceilings.

We are far from a circuit that builds itself completely. But we have succeeded in converging two approaches that have been traveling along parallel tracks so far. And it allowed us to build a silicon resonator with unprecedented miniaturization, says Sren Stobbe.

One approach the top-down approach is behind the spectacular development we have seen with silicon-based semiconductor technologies. Here, crudely put, you go from a silicon block and work on making nanostructures from them. The other approach the bottom-up approach is where you try to have a nanotechnological system assemble itself. It aims to mimic biological systems, such as plants or animals, built through biological or chemical processes. These two approaches are at the very core of what defines nanotechnology. But the problem is that these two approaches were so far disconnected: Semiconductors are scalable but cannot reach the atomic scale, and while self-assembled structures have long been operating at atomic scales, they offer no architecture for the interconnects to the external world.

The leading authors at work in the lab: Ph.D.-student Ali Nawaz Babar, postdoc Guillermo Arregui, and Associate Professor Sren Stobbe. Credit: Ole Ekelund

The interesting thing would be if we could produce an electronic circuit that built itselfjust like what happens with humans as they grow but with inorganic semiconductor materials. That would be true hierarchical self-assembly. We use the new self-assembly concept for photonic resonators, which may be used in electronics, nanorobotics, sensors, quantum technologies, and much more. Then, we would really be able to harvest the full potential of nanotechnology. The research community is many breakthroughs away from realizing that vision, but I hope we have taken the first steps, says Guillermo Arregui, who co-supervised the project.

FACT BOX: How it was done

The paper details three experiments that the researchers carried out in the labs at DTU:

Supposing a combination of the two approaches is possible, the team at DTU Electro set out to create nanostructures that surpass the limits of conventional lithography and etching despite using nothing more than conventional lithography and etching. Their idea was to use two surface forces, namely the Casimir force for attracting the two halves and the van der Waals force for making them stick together. These two forces are rooted in the same underlying effect: quantum fluctuations (see Fact box).

The researchers made photonic cavities that confine photons to air gaps so small that determining their exact size was impossible, even with a transmission electron microscope. But the smallest they built are of a size of 1-3 silicon atoms.

Even if the self-assembly takes care of reaching these extreme dimensions, the requirements for the nanofabrication are no less extreme. For example, structural imperfections are typically on the scale of several nanometers. Still, if there are defects at this scale, the two halves will only meet and touch at the three largest defects. We are really pushing the limits here, even though we make our devices in one of the very best university cleanrooms in the world, says Ali Nawaz Babar, a PhD student at the NanoPhoton Center of Excellence at DTU Electro and first author of the new paper.

The advantage of self-assembly is that you can make tiny things. You can build unique materials with amazing properties. But today, you cant use it for anything you plug into a power outlet. You cant connect it to the rest of the world. So, you need all the usual semiconductor technology for making the wires or waveguides to connect whatever you have self-assembled to the external world.

The paper shows a possible way to link the two nanotechnology approaches by employing a new generation of fabrication technology that combines the atomic dimensions enabled by self-assembly with the scalability of semiconductors fabricated with conventional methods.

We dont have to go in and find these cavities afterward and insert them into another chip architecture. That would also be impossible because of the tiny size. In other words, we are building something on the scale of an atom already inserted in a macroscopic circuit. We are very excited about this new line of research, and plenty of work is ahead, says Sren Stobbe.

Reference: Self-assembled photonic cavities with atomic-scale confinement 6 December 2023, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06736-8

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Revolutionizing Nanotechnology: Photonic Cavities that Self-Assemble at the Atomic Level - SciTechDaily

Nanotechnology deals with the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications.

Dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers are known as the nanoscale.

Some examples to demonstrate the size of the nanoscale. ( Nanowerk) (click on image to enlarge)

The term was coined in 1974 by Norio Taniguichi of of Tokyo Science University to describe semiconductor processes such as thin-film deposition that deal with control on the order of nanometers. His definition still stands as the basic statement today: "Nano-technology mainly consists of the processing of separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule."

Many argue that the history of nanotechnology starts with Richard Feynman's classic talk in December 1959: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom - An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics:

Unusual physical, chemical, and biological properties can emerge in materials at the nanoscale. These properties may differ in important ways from the properties of bulk materials and single atoms or molecules.

The bulk properties of materials often change dramatically with nano ingredients. Composites made from particles of nano-size ceramics or metals smaller than 100 nanometers can suddenly become much stronger than predicted by existing materials-science models.

For example, metals with a so-called grain size of around 10 nanometers are as much as seven times harder and tougher than their ordinary counterparts with grain sizes in the hundreds of nanometers. The causes of these drastic changes stem from the weird world of quantum physics. The bulk properties of any material are merely the average of all the quantum forces affecting all the atoms. As you make things smaller and smaller, you eventually reach a point where the averaging no longer works.

The properties of materials can be different at the nanoscale for two main reasons:

Surface Area

Quantum Size Effects

Second, quantum effects can begin to dominate the behavior of matter at the nanoscale particularly at the lower end affecting the optical, electrical and magnetic behavior of materials. This effect describes the physics of electron properties in solids with great reductions in particle size. This effect does not come into play by going from macro to micro dimensions. However, it becomes dominant when the nanometer size range is reached.

The fascination with nanotechnology stems from these unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale. They improve existing industrial processes, materials and applications in many fields and allows entirely new ones.

With regard to nanoscale materials, there are plenty of examples we could talk about here nanoparticles, quantum dots, nanowires, nanofibers, ultrathin-films, MXenes, etc.

One example, though, that is exemplary of how an 'old' material gets an exciting new life through nanoscale technologies is the element carbon.

Current applications of nanomaterials include very thin coatings used, for example, in electronics and active surfaces (such as self-cleaning windows). In most applications the nanomaterial will be fixed or embedded but in some, such as those used in cosmetics and in some environmental remediation applications, free nanoparticles are used. The ability to engineer materials to very high precision and accuracy (smaller than 100nm) is leading to considerable benefits in a wide range of industrial sectors, for instance in the production of components for the information and communication technology, automotive and aerospace industries.

A mite, less than 1 mm in size, approaching a microscale gear chain. (Image: Sandia National Laboratories)

Some 20-30 years ago, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) emerged in industrial manufacturing in a major way. MEMS consist of any combination of mechanical (levers, springs, membranes, etc.) and electrical (resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc.) components to work as sensors or actuators. The size of today's smartphones would be impossible without the use of numerous MEMS devices. Apart from accelerometers and gyroscopes, smartphones contain micro-mirrors, image sensors, auto-focus actuators, pressure sensors, magnetometers, microphones, proximity sensors and many more. Another example from everyday life is the use of MEMS as accelerometers in modern automobile airbags where they sense rapid deceleration and, if the force is beyond a programmed threshold, initiate the inflation of the airbag.

Then, researchers took a further step down the size scale and have begun exploring another level of miniaturization nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). NEMS are showning great promise as highly sensitive detectors of mass, displacement, charge, and energy.

In some senses, nanoscience and nanotechnologies are not new. Chemists have been making polymers, which are large molecules made up of nanoscale subunits, for many decades and nanotechnologies have been used to create the tiny features on computer chips for the past 30 years.

However, advances in the tools that now allow individual atoms and molecules to be examined and probed with great precision have enabled the expansion and development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies. With new tools came new fundamental concepts and it turned out that the mechanical rules that govern the nanoworld are quite different from our everyday, macroworld experience.

Today there are a number of tools that can be used to characterize the nanomechanics of biomolecular and cellular interactions. Besides cantilever-based instruments like the AFM, examples include optical tweezers, and magnetic pullers.

Nano tech improves existing industrial processes, materials and applications by scaling them down to the nanoscale in order to ultimately fully exploit the unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale. This trend is driven by companies' ongoing quest to improve existing products by creating smaller components and better performance materials, all at a lower cost.

A prime nanotechnology example of an industry where nanoscale manufacturing technologies are employed on a large scale and throughout is the semiconductor industry where device structures have reached the single nanometers scale. Your smartphone, smartwatch or tablet all are containing billions of transistors on a computer chip the size of a finger nail.

So, what can nanotechnology do? There is almost no field today where nanotechnology isn't applied in some form or shape as things like surface coatings, sensors, electronic components, membranes, etc. in medicine, environmental remediation, water filtration, nanoelectronics, food and agriculture, cosmetics, energy and batteries, space and aeronautics, automotive industries, displays, sports equipment and many more.

If you select "Introduction to Nanotechnology" from our menu bar above you will find numerous articles on all these topics in the right column.

Many products are defined as "nanotechnology product" because they contain nanoparticles in some form or other. For instance, many antimicrobial coatings contain silver in nanoscale form; food products and cosmetics contain nanoparticles; and some products are partially made with composite materials containing nanomaterials (e.g. carbon nanotubes or -fibers) to mechanically strengthen the material.

"Nanotech" products that are on the market today are mostly gradually improved products (using evolutionary nanotechnology) where some form of nano-enabled material (such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, nanocomposite structures or nanoparticles of a particular substance) or nanotech process (e.g. nanopatterning or quantum dots for medical imaging) is used in the manufacturing process.

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Nanotechnology - Definition and Introduction - Nanowerk

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Matter can exhibit unusual physical, chemical, and biological properties at the nanoscale, differing in important ways from the properties of bulk materials, single atoms, and molecules. Some nanostructured materials are stronger or have different magnetic properties compared to other forms or sizes of the same material. Others are better at conducting heat or electricity. They may become more chemically reactive, reflect light better, or change color as their size or structure is altered.

Although modern nanoscience and nanotechnology are relatively new, nanoscale materials have been used for centuries. Gold and silver nanoparticles created colors in the stained-glass windows of medieval churches hundreds of years ago. The artists back then just didnt know that they were using nanotechnology to create these beautiful works of art!

Nanotechnology encompasses nanoscale science, engineering, and technology in fields such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering. Nanotechnology research and development involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter between approximately 1100 nanometers.

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About Nanotechnology | National Nanotechnology Initiative