Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast and makes the future, and says I turned
Speaker 1: my back for two minutes and they've grown again. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Pocalban, and I'm Joe McCormick. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, guys, I don't want to make a big
Speaker 1: deal about this. I know it's a small thing, but
Speaker 1: nano scale, am I right? Was wonderful? Man? That that
Speaker 1: noise that Joe just made. If anyone's ever ever heard
Speaker 1: me shaking my head, and that's exactly yeah. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we're glad you put a voice to it. Sorry, anyway,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I wanted to talk to thought today about honestly,
Speaker 1: come on, I'm trying to get it out now. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk today about the nano scale and and
Speaker 1: why things that the nano scale are so special and unusual,
Speaker 1: particularly when we think about how we're familiar with material
Speaker 1: on the macro scale that's that's in our world in
Speaker 1: amounts that we're able to see and pick up and
Speaker 1: and manipulate. Yeah, So, if you are interested in the
Speaker 1: future or have been within the past decade and a
Speaker 1: half or so, you've probably heard a whole lot about nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: but you might not necessarily know any of the principles
Speaker 1: behind nanotechnology except that it has something to do with
Speaker 1: extremely tiny robots that will turn the world into Google, right,
Speaker 1: or will make us be able to resist make us superhero.
Speaker 1: It's one of the one of the two. Really, it's
Speaker 1: either Google or Awesome. Well, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that has been through a lot of hype, and there
Speaker 1: has been a lot of It's sort of one of
Speaker 1: those magic technologies and people just invoke it like a
Speaker 1: magic spell to say that it can do anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of media reports kind of simplify it
Speaker 1: to the point where, uh, you know, you don't really
Speaker 1: understand what they're talking about because it's it's so general
Speaker 1: and vague, because you get the feeling that they don't
Speaker 1: really understand what they're talking about. They're going, like science, y'all,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah, it's like using a placeholder, you know,
Speaker 1: just throw nanotechnology in there and everything will be fine.
Speaker 1: But it's it's uh, it is fascinating, it is and
Speaker 1: it's a true industry. It's not like we're not trying
Speaker 1: to downplay this, and so nanotechnology isn't a thing. It's
Speaker 1: totally a thing. It's a true industry, and it's an
Speaker 1: industry that's really trying to happen, especially if you've read
Speaker 1: about any of the huge sort of patent rush that's
Speaker 1: been going on over the previous years in nanotechnology. People
Speaker 1: are taking out so many patents on ideas for nanotechnology,
Speaker 1: you know, devices that they have no way of making
Speaker 1: function right now, some of which they might have at
Speaker 1: least a way of approaching it. But yeah, that well,
Speaker 1: there's so many patents it's possible to see this as
Speaker 1: an impediment to actual work getting done in the field.
Speaker 1: I will say that, you know, everyone who's listening to
Speaker 1: this is likely doing so on a device that is
Speaker 1: incorporating nanotechnology because at this at this stage, microprocessors have
Speaker 1: transistors and other elements that are on the nanoscale. So
Speaker 1: these are things that have been made to such a
Speaker 1: a precise degree that it's it's super super tiny, tinier
Speaker 1: than we can see using a light microscope. Jonathan, Yeah,
Speaker 1: super super tiny. Come on, let's use some real terms here.
Speaker 1: Let's back up and say what the heck is the
Speaker 1: nano scale, and why should we care about it? Right? So,
Speaker 1: a nanometer is one billionth of a meter, so that
Speaker 1: that's very difficult to have rightly. Put you this way,
Speaker 1: all right, your typical sheet of paper, just a sheet
Speaker 1: of paper, a single sheet of paper is about one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand nanometers thick. So that edge of a sheet
Speaker 1: of paper that can give you that nasty paper cut
Speaker 1: that's actually enormous. On the nano scale, red blood cell
Speaker 1: would be two thousand, five hundred nanometers across. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's the micro scale, which is the scale large,
Speaker 1: one scale larger than the nano scale, uh, which you
Speaker 1: know at that level we can look at stuff using
Speaker 1: light microscopes. But the nanoscale we're actually talking about things
Speaker 1: typically we're we're talking about stuff that's around a hundred nanometers,
Speaker 1: are smaller in size. I mean, you're kind of it's
Speaker 1: it's not exact. There's not like a cutoff where you say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's not nano scale, it's microscale unless you're
Speaker 1: talking about a thousand nanometers. In that point you're like no, literally, um,
Speaker 1: but you know this is a size where things are
Speaker 1: so small that light waves actually kind of hit on
Speaker 1: either side, like the particles can fit in between, sort
Speaker 1: of like how in science fiction you have those creatures
Speaker 1: occasionally that are able to exist in between seconds, and
Speaker 1: that's why we can't see them. But in this case,
Speaker 1: it's stuff that's so small that light waves can't interact
Speaker 1: with them. You don't see them using light. I think, uh,
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, But I think one good
Speaker 1: way of looking at it is it is it's sort
Speaker 1: of at the molecular scale can be. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: larger than single app yes, right, a nanometer might be
Speaker 1: about ten atoms together. Yeah, that's the atomic scale would
Speaker 1: be the next smallest scale, and the nanoscale really is
Speaker 1: the realm of the molecule. Okay. Yeah. So and also
Speaker 1: while we're talking about this, while we talk about nanotechnology
Speaker 1: and that sounds, you know very much humans have their
Speaker 1: hand in it. We're the ones building this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: we should also stress that a lot of nanotechnology depends
Speaker 1: very heavily on things that we already find in nature,
Speaker 1: specifically stuff like viruses, which are on the nanoscale. These
Speaker 1: viruses range in size, you know, that's not like it's
Speaker 1: not one size fits all. But these are tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny structures. Some would say organisms, some do not, because
Speaker 1: virus is one of those tricky things. Is it, is
Speaker 1: it life? Is it not life? Um, there's not full
Speaker 1: agreement on the matter. But it is found in nature,
Speaker 1: and in fact, nanotechnology has made great use of viruses,
Speaker 1: both as a source of inspiration and actually as something
Speaker 1: that we could use by scooping all all the virus
Speaker 1: stuff out and replacing it with other stuff, keeping that
Speaker 1: shell intact. Absolutely, DNA itself is on the nano scale.
Speaker 1: A particle of d N DNA might be about two
Speaker 1: nanometers across, which is the size of a carbon nanotube.
Speaker 1: By the way, particles of smoke also on the nano scale.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is stuff that, uh is both in
Speaker 1: nature and stuff that we will construct ourselves, we being
Speaker 1: people way smarter than I am, not the three the
Speaker 1: four people in this room. I will say I visited
Speaker 1: a nano lab just last week in a high school
Speaker 1: in Chicago. So high school had its own nano lab,
Speaker 1: including scanning electron microscopes so that they could see the
Speaker 1: stuff they were working on. I was blown away. In
Speaker 1: my high school. In my high school, we had a
Speaker 1: computer and it was an apple. Um, So anyway, the
Speaker 1: interesting thing you asked me. Also, why is the nano
Speaker 1: scale important? We've explained what it is, but why do
Speaker 1: we care? Well, we care? Can you really do anything
Speaker 1: useful down there that tiny, tiny range on? Well? Technically
Speaker 1: right now, that's that's up for that's kind of up
Speaker 1: for grabs. But you, Dennis Quaide and you're in this
Speaker 1: this device that could be shrunk down to the nano scale. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Martin short is nearby. Hey, first, let's say we
Speaker 1: do have a lot to learn about the name, because
Speaker 1: the nano scale is, as you might have understood if
Speaker 1: you've ever studied, say, quantum physics, when you get down
Speaker 1: to the very very small scale, things don't act like
Speaker 1: you're used to exactly. On the nano scale, material that
Speaker 1: you could be extremely familiar with will demonstrate properties that
Speaker 1: are completely different from the ones you're accustomed to. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, like color, okay, so so so gold we
Speaker 1: call it gold. There's a color called gold because that
Speaker 1: is the color that gold is. Yeah, exactly why we
Speaker 1: call oranges oranges? Right, but so at at the at
Speaker 1: the nano scale, gold has to be gold, right, No,
Speaker 1: it does not have to be. Don't. You can't tell
Speaker 1: gold how to be. You aren't the boss of gold.
Speaker 1: Gold decides it wants to be purple. As it turns
Speaker 1: out on the nano scale, particles of gold are actually red.
Speaker 1: So it's still gold, you know, chemically, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it's no longer the color gold. It is the color
Speaker 1: red red or kind of purple. Yeah. And and this
Speaker 1: happens to be a function of gold electrons being confined
Speaker 1: at this scale, which means that the gold interacts with
Speaker 1: light differently. And you can actually see this. If you
Speaker 1: see gold nanoparticles that are suspended in solution, the solution
Speaker 1: itself will appear to be read or slightly purplish and
Speaker 1: not gold. So that's kind of interesting. Also, the melting
Speaker 1: point of materials changes. A melting point that's where a
Speaker 1: solid turns into a liquid, so gold using gold again
Speaker 1: as an example. The melting point is typically on the
Speaker 1: macro scale. So if you had a bar of gold
Speaker 1: and you want to alt it down and be a
Speaker 1: James Bond villain and melt somebody with it, then you
Speaker 1: would need to heat that up to one thousand degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or one thousand sixty four degrees sels use, but
Speaker 1: on the nanoscale it's actually lower. The melting point is
Speaker 1: lower than that, and the actual melting point depends on
Speaker 1: the size of the nanoparticle. So it's not just that
Speaker 1: at a smaller size, these little particles will melt at
Speaker 1: a lower temperature. It's all size dependent, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that has to do with surface area, which will
Speaker 1: get into a little bit later. Also, the hardness of
Speaker 1: material can be different at the nanoscale than it is
Speaker 1: on the macro scale. It's electrical conductivity. Some substances that
Speaker 1: don't that aren't very good conductors on the macro scale
Speaker 1: become excellent conductors of electricity on the nanoscale, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: You'll find some things that end up acting more like
Speaker 1: an insulator on the nanoscale than they do on the
Speaker 1: macro scale. So knowing that, knowing that material has these
Speaker 1: different properties at these different sizes, means that you can
Speaker 1: take advantage of that and design electronics that leverage that.
Speaker 1: Also the chemical reactivity. By the way, one thing that's
Speaker 1: related to this that I didn't put on this list
Speaker 1: is toxicity. So a material may or may not be
Speaker 1: more or less toxic on the nanoscale than it is
Speaker 1: on the macro scale. Similar Similarly, they will react differently
Speaker 1: in chemical reactions on the nano scale than on the
Speaker 1: macro scale. And again that has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with surface area, which again I'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: Just calm down, I'm gonna get there. And then there's magnetoism. Magnetism,
Speaker 1: It still has nothing to do with the x men.
Speaker 1: I keep trying. I know it's a valiant effort, um.
Speaker 1: But no nano particles of magnetic substances like like iron
Speaker 1: oxide for example, can exert magnetic force on each other
Speaker 1: when exposed to weak magnets just plain old handheld things, um.
Speaker 1: Which means that that what we expect to happen is
Speaker 1: that we'd need a huge electro magnet to to move
Speaker 1: magnetic nano particles. Um. But but if you just introduce
Speaker 1: them to a really weak magnetic field, they'll start moving themselves.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit about that again in
Speaker 1: a minute. Because there are certain forces that are really
Speaker 1: important on the nano scale, and other forces that, while
Speaker 1: they're important to us on the macro scale, don't mean
Speaker 1: a thing once you get down to a couple of nanometers.
Speaker 1: Just doesn't doesn't even you know, it's a negligible effect.
Speaker 1: And uh, Anyway, another important part is that the motion
Speaker 1: of energy at the nano scale, this is kind of
Speaker 1: falling into what you were saying, Joe. It follows the
Speaker 1: rules of quantum physics rather than classical physics. So now
Speaker 1: we're starting to see some quantum effects come into play.
Speaker 1: And this is where stuff really behaves in a weird way,
Speaker 1: things that are not intuitive to us on the map.
Speaker 1: Whether you're trying to use your intuitions or you're trying
Speaker 1: to work it out with Newtonian equations, it's it's not
Speaker 1: going to make sense at this scale. They're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to predict movement by going going by
Speaker 1: Newton's book. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty at the level,
Speaker 1: which if you are able to take into account, means
Speaker 1: that you can work your way around it. But if
Speaker 1: you take some really interesting things exactly, but if you're
Speaker 1: not able to take it into account, then you might
Speaker 1: end up creating, say a microchip that is useless because
Speaker 1: it cannot control the flow of electrons. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into that as well. So now we've covered the different properties,
Speaker 1: what about the things that are important or not important
Speaker 1: at the scale that I you know, I just alluded
Speaker 1: to it a minute ago. Well, service area, like I said,
Speaker 1: way more important than it would be on the macro scale.
Speaker 1: And specifically, the reason we say that is because the
Speaker 1: surface area ends up the ratio of surface area to
Speaker 1: volume is out of control. On the nano scale, you've
Speaker 1: got way more surface area than you would have volume
Speaker 1: because you're talking about teny T T teeny tiny nanoparticles
Speaker 1: share a collection of nanoparticles as as you can imagine
Speaker 1: very clearly. Probably it's it's like having a having a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of blocks versus one large solid block of
Speaker 1: the same volume. Yeah, and so this means that that
Speaker 1: surface area that enormous relative to its volume. Surface area
Speaker 1: means that more of that that substance can come into
Speaker 1: contact with something else than it would on the macro scale. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, relatively speaking, more of the actual substance would
Speaker 1: be exposed to a solution. For example, if you were
Speaker 1: to suspend nanoparticles into a solution, more of the service
Speaker 1: of those particles would be exposed to that other substance,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Then it would if it were
Speaker 1: a you know, a bar of it on the macro scale.
Speaker 1: That means that it can do stuff more efficiently than
Speaker 1: many things on the macro scale, and that includes being
Speaker 1: a catalyst. Now, a catalyst in chemistry, we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that facilitates chemical reactions, not necessarily that it itself
Speaker 1: reacts chemically with something else, but it might aid in
Speaker 1: the reaction of another substance third party negotiator. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good way of putting it. So, for example, fuel cells,
Speaker 1: we talked about those a lot. A catalyst and a
Speaker 1: fuel cell is essentially what convinces you know, I say convinced.
Speaker 1: There's not really any convincing, but go with you this
Speaker 1: convincing a hydrogen atom to ditch it's its electrons, become
Speaker 1: a hydrogen ion and pass through a membrane. Right, you
Speaker 1: might want a little bit of what platinum in there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about platinum on the nanoscale, little nanoparticles of platinum.
Speaker 1: And again, the reason why you want nanoparticles it exposes
Speaker 1: more surface area of the platinum, so that way it's
Speaker 1: a much more efficient catalyst. So it's also why a
Speaker 1: lot of the earlier fuel cells were so expensive because
Speaker 1: you had to have platinum to be able to create
Speaker 1: this catalyst for the membrane for your basic hydrogen based
Speaker 1: fuel cell. So this catalyst then convinces the hydrogen to ditch.
Speaker 1: The electrons come on across a permeable membrane and join
Speaker 1: some oxygen, and then the electrons go through a pathway,
Speaker 1: a circuit that you have built so that they do
Speaker 1: work what however you wanted them to work, like drive
Speaker 1: a car, for example, and then they rejoin the fuel
Speaker 1: cell on the other side, and that's where you get
Speaker 1: the water, where the hydrogen, ions, the oxygen, and the
Speaker 1: electrons all rejoin, and then all you have is water
Speaker 1: and then the electricity and the heat. So that's just
Speaker 1: one example of how the chemical reactions are are different
Speaker 1: on the now scale and how it's really important. The
Speaker 1: other thing I wanted to mention was that I had
Speaker 1: talked about how some forces are really important others aren't.
Speaker 1: Gravity on the nanoscale is practically meaningless. You it's these
Speaker 1: particles are so small and these reactions happen so close
Speaker 1: together that gravity really doesn't play a part. It's it's negligible.
Speaker 1: You can pretty much ignore it. However, electro magnetic force
Speaker 1: off the charts incredibly powerful. So, like you were saying, Lauren,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take a very strong magnetic field for you
Speaker 1: to have a strong effect because those forces are way
Speaker 1: more important at this scale than something like gravity. Gravity
Speaker 1: big important force when you're talking about cosmological scale, right,
Speaker 1: and then electromagnetism doesn't really have that much of an
Speaker 1: effect because it's it's not as strong over great distances,
Speaker 1: but you know here it's the opposite way. So interesting
Speaker 1: thing to think about. And also, electrons they get up
Speaker 1: to Shenanigan's yeah, they can. They can tunnel through materials
Speaker 1: that are that are one nanometer thick that they can
Speaker 1: kind of teleport from one side of a barrier to another,
Speaker 1: which is not teleportation is not actually something that that
Speaker 1: is physically that's against the rules usually, so uh, to
Speaker 1: get a little more specific with this, this is one
Speaker 1: of the big problems with designing microprocessors using nano sized
Speaker 1: pathways because if the chips in your computer do you're
Speaker 1: you're thinking for you, right, because ultimately that's really about
Speaker 1: controlling the flow of electrons through lots of teeny teeny
Speaker 1: super teeny tiny circuitry. Right, So you have these electron
Speaker 1: gates that either allow an electron through or prevent an
Speaker 1: electron from moving through. And these gates are getting smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller as we continue to miniaturize these these UH
Speaker 1: elements so that we keep making more powerful microprocessors. Essentially
Speaker 1: more powerful means you've crammed more elements onto that microprocessor
Speaker 1: by making them smaller. So we've seen this ever since
Speaker 1: the very the birth of the transistor. Now the problem
Speaker 1: is when that gate gets so thin that the electron
Speaker 1: can tunnel through. And by tunnel through, we don't mean
Speaker 1: that it actually makes a hole and then passes through.
Speaker 1: It's not damaging the gate. What's happening is there's a
Speaker 1: field around where when we say an electron is located
Speaker 1: a certain place, we don't really mean it's exactly right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's more like a field of probability of where an
Speaker 1: electron can be found at any given time. So you
Speaker 1: can think of it as sort of nebulous, almost like
Speaker 1: a gas like thing. Alright, just just an area and
Speaker 1: anywhere within that area the electron has the possibility of
Speaker 1: being at any given time. Now, as that starts to
Speaker 1: approach a gate, if the gate is thin enough, then
Speaker 1: part of the area could overlap the gate and be
Speaker 1: on the other side, with the other part of the
Speaker 1: area being on on the first side of the gate,
Speaker 1: And therefore, when we need to act the position of
Speaker 1: the electron, there's a pretty good chance that it's going
Speaker 1: to be across that gate. Yeah, there's at least a possibility.
Speaker 1: And as long as there's a possibility, that means sometimes
Speaker 1: it is on the other side of that gate. Right,
Speaker 1: if it's possible for it to be there, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: going to be there, and maybe that it's a fifteen
Speaker 1: percent possibility and that of the time it's going to
Speaker 1: be on the other side. But even that means sometimes
Speaker 1: the electrons on the other side of the gate, which
Speaker 1: means your gate is not keeping the electrons out, which means,
Speaker 1: in the case of electronics, the thing is barked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it means that you get errors. You know, you're you
Speaker 1: get a microprocessor that cannot process without without lots of
Speaker 1: logic failures. So that's a real engineering problem, and there
Speaker 1: have been lots of different engineers working on this and
Speaker 1: they solve it in different ways. Usually they use different
Speaker 1: exotic materials that are better at at blocking electrons than others.
Speaker 1: But but ultimately it's this quantum effect that makes things
Speaker 1: so tricky, and that's the world of the nano scale.
Speaker 1: Like you know, again, in a classic world, if you
Speaker 1: were to roll a ball towards a toward a brick wall,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect it to suddenly appear on the other
Speaker 1: side of the brick wall and continue rolling. That just
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen. It would bounce off the brick wall. Or
Speaker 1: if that red ball were filled with some sort of
Speaker 1: incredibly dense material, perhaps it would make a hole in it,
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't. It wouldn't just pass like onto the
Speaker 1: other side without any other kind of interaction. It's extremely unlikely. Well,
Speaker 1: another thing about that red ball, if you want to
Speaker 1: play with the ball, you can predict pretty much what
Speaker 1: it's going to do. It's initial starting conditions, Like I've
Speaker 1: pushed it in this direction with this amount of force,
Speaker 1: you can actually predict pretty well where it's gonna end up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as you know the other variables, like you
Speaker 1: know how smooth the surfaces it's rolling on. But ultimately
Speaker 1: you've got a good idea, you know, just even intuitively
Speaker 1: on the on the nanoscale, that doesn't come into play.
Speaker 1: There's also this idea of random molecular motion or brownie
Speaker 1: in motion. I'm sure you've probably heard that term if
Speaker 1: you've ever taking chemistry or physics, like the idea of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the brownie and motion also explains the movement
Speaker 1: of things like smells. So if you are baking cookies
Speaker 1: and you walk into a house and someone or someone
Speaker 1: else has been baking cookies and you walk in and
Speaker 1: you smell it, that's brownie emotion. That explains the motion
Speaker 1: of the molecules that move through the atmosphere. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe that you didn't just say brownies instead of cookies,
Speaker 1: so that it could have been brownies motion. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's that's a fair point. I didn't miss an opportunity.
Speaker 1: But I also like cookies more than I like brownies.
Speaker 1: So anyway, at the at the macro scale, random motions
Speaker 1: not as big a deal. Okay, So think of this
Speaker 1: like a stream that's moving just at a a steady rate,
Speaker 1: but not crazy. Like it's not a rapid, but it's
Speaker 1: a steady rate. Now on the macro scale, if you're
Speaker 1: walking through that stream, you might feel a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tug here and there, but it's not that
Speaker 1: bad on the nano scale. This seemingly simple motion on
Speaker 1: the macro scale becomes really chaotic, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: much more of a kind of a raging, rapid sort
Speaker 1: of approach. And uh so it's sort of that idea
Speaker 1: of as you get smaller, these these seemingly um tiny
Speaker 1: effects have much larger consequences, as we all saw from
Speaker 1: the documentary Honey I Shrunk the Kids exactly, or or
Speaker 1: inner space as I was alluding to earlier. Yes, both
Speaker 1: of those have proven beyond reasonable doubt that tiny things
Speaker 1: can have big impact. Okay, so we've been hearing about
Speaker 1: nanotechnology for years. Can it actually do anything for us?
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely so those microprocessors I mentioned, you could
Speaker 1: argue those have had a some somewhat of an impact
Speaker 1: on our lives by boys, But you know, we're using
Speaker 1: nanotechnology and all sorts of fields already, right, not just
Speaker 1: high tech, but in ways that you might not anticipate.
Speaker 1: For example, sunscreen, so zinc oxide. On the macro scale,
Speaker 1: the macro particles, even if you're talking about just a
Speaker 1: you know, a few um micro eaters in size, they're opaque.
Speaker 1: So that's where you get that white zinc oxide, uh
Speaker 1: some block. You know, if you ever saw the the
Speaker 1: pictures of people in moving old style with with like
Speaker 1: stripes of some block on it, like the nose is
Speaker 1: totally white and everything else, you know, that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: those are zinc oxide particles. But these days it can
Speaker 1: be titanium oxide as well, But the concept is still
Speaker 1: the same. It is physically blocking the sun's rays from
Speaker 1: reaching your face. So on the nano scale, zinc oxide
Speaker 1: is actually transparent, and you can still use nanoparticles of
Speaker 1: zinc oxide within a sun block that um that still
Speaker 1: have that ultra violet blocking. They still work even though
Speaker 1: they appear transparent to our eyes. Yeah, so we are
Speaker 1: able to make some block that doesn't make you look
Speaker 1: extra pasty for people who have skin tones like some
Speaker 1: of the people in this room, all of the people
Speaker 1: in this room where where when sun hits us, we
Speaker 1: look like we stepped out of a vampire movie and
Speaker 1: we should be turning to dust almost immediately. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important stuff. Yeah, I mean you can use it
Speaker 1: to make things stronger, more durable, water repellent, stain resistant,
Speaker 1: more absorbent, heat insulated, reflective, or anti reflective, scratch resistant,
Speaker 1: airtight for certain gases, uh, moisture controlling, conductive, fluorescence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a huge list of things that can make
Speaker 1: material behave in a way that otherwise it wouldn't. So
Speaker 1: whether you're trying to make something hydrophobic or hydrophilic, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nanoparticles can go a long way to helping
Speaker 1: you achieve that. And um, you know, there's there's importance
Speaker 1: to this work. Like we said, with these, the fact
Speaker 1: that the features the properties of materials changed dramatically at
Speaker 1: the nano scale than they do at the macro scale,
Speaker 1: it's important that we study those so that we understand
Speaker 1: how to use them, like what what what are the
Speaker 1: potential applications for that material, and also whether or not
Speaker 1: it's even safe to use them, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: the toxicity can change since they work differently at that scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out how else they work differently
Speaker 1: other than looking transparent for example for example. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like silver, silver is something that we've used. It's people
Speaker 1: have understood that silver is important with medicine for ages,
Speaker 1: and it does have the unfortunate side effect of having
Speaker 1: silver deposits build up in your various tissues, including your skin,
Speaker 1: so that if you were to take it, you know,
Speaker 1: over an extended period of time, you would start to
Speaker 1: turn blue. There are pictures of people who have done this,
Speaker 1: who have used the colloidal silver as a means of medicating.
Speaker 1: It's not like I mean, I'm not certain that anyone's
Speaker 1: ever done it on purpose for cosmetic purposes, but you
Speaker 1: know the examples I've seen, it's all been a medicinal thing. Well,
Speaker 1: silver actually does have antimicrobial properties. It can't kill off microbes,
Speaker 1: and it's actually through silver ions. It's the way that
Speaker 1: silver ions interact with oxygen and then break down these
Speaker 1: microbes and kill them. So we have seen silver nanoparticles
Speaker 1: used in uh in in wound dressings, in bandages so
Speaker 1: that it will help doctors bind up a wound and
Speaker 1: thus help prevent infection or at least decrease the chances
Speaker 1: of infection, which are obviously really important. It can turn
Speaker 1: it can turn a uh you know, a wound that
Speaker 1: could be inconvenient or irritating or uh you know, it
Speaker 1: could slow you down into an infection, could turn it deadly.
Speaker 1: I mean even even a wound that you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: well that you know, I'll be fine in a few weeks.
Speaker 1: That if it's infected, that's serious. So uh, but you know,
Speaker 1: that could be a totally different story. If silver nanoparticles
Speaker 1: themselves had been toxic to humans, then obviously you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to be You wouldn't want to do that, just
Speaker 1: like you don't really want to use colloidal silver as
Speaker 1: a means of treating a medical issue, especially if you
Speaker 1: don't want to turn blue. By the way, that is irreversible, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't. It's not like it's a layer of skin
Speaker 1: that eventually wears off. That is that's under your tissue
Speaker 1: and that's how you will look for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. So just a word of warning. But we
Speaker 1: can also start to understand whether or not future applications
Speaker 1: of nanotechnology are particularly practical or viable. So you you
Speaker 1: Joe mentioned at the top of the show about nano robots,
Speaker 1: and that was I mean, that's a really it's still
Speaker 1: a fairly popular subject among futurists. But it's also something
Speaker 1: that a lot I won't say all, but a lot
Speaker 1: of engineers and nanotechnology experts have said, is if that's
Speaker 1: going to be something we see in the future, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a ways off. You gotta walk before
Speaker 1: you can run. Yeah, absolutely, and we we're not quite
Speaker 1: walking yet. Um. In order to make complex interacting parts
Speaker 1: at the nano scale, it seems much simpler to start
Speaker 1: with basic sort of nano structures that you think can
Speaker 1: can do interesting things for you, but they might not
Speaker 1: have complex moving parts, right, all right, we really need
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on on the nano scale
Speaker 1: before we can start to apply those those high level
Speaker 1: kind of things, um. You know, for for for example,
Speaker 1: a lot of the biological processes that this could be
Speaker 1: very useful in in aiding or changing in our bodies,
Speaker 1: we don't understand very well yet, DNA combination and photosynthesis
Speaker 1: or stuff that we're really just beginning to to understand
Speaker 1: on that scale, right. Yeah. We we know like the
Speaker 1: general processes and we know what the outcomes are, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we understand the mechanisms behind it. And
Speaker 1: in fact, we're going to have an upcoming episode about
Speaker 1: antibiotics where we talk about even the mechanisms bacteria have
Speaker 1: that end up causing us to actually feel ill and
Speaker 1: become ill. We don't fully understand those yet. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's boring old micro scale stuff. Yeah, so obviously very
Speaker 1: important to understand. Okay, So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: sort of the current state of nanotechnology by way of
Speaker 1: just singling out what I think are some of the
Speaker 1: coolest discoveries in recent years, definitely in uh in nanoscience
Speaker 1: and nanoscale research. And one of the first things I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about was a few years ago, is
Speaker 1: from two thousand and ten when IBM was able to
Speaker 1: use a nano scale silicon chisel to carve this three
Speaker 1: D relief map of the surface of the Earth onto
Speaker 1: a polymer substrate. So it's it's using a nano scale
Speaker 1: needle basically to carve a nano scale model. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how how big was this canvas? So the map was
Speaker 1: twenty two by eleven micrometers, which is so small that,
Speaker 1: according to the IBM press release, a thousand of these
Speaker 1: maps could fit on a single grain of table salt.
Speaker 1: Though that's assuming your grain is zero point three millimeters,
Speaker 1: and some grains, as we know, are bigger than others.
Speaker 1: If you're using rock salt, that's a lot of maps
Speaker 1: on your rock salt, right, uh So, but this one
Speaker 1: of the cool things about this because it's not the
Speaker 1: first time we've manipulated objects at at that scale. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been able to do this before. Yeah. But one
Speaker 1: of the cool things about this was that it was
Speaker 1: done in two minutes and twenty three seconds fast. Yeah, bam,
Speaker 1: super fast. So they also carved a three D model
Speaker 1: of the matter Horn, which is that big craggy mountain
Speaker 1: in Europe. I'm sure you've seen Disneyland. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a like rhinocerous horn. The actual matter
Speaker 1: Horn is more impressive than the Right of Disney They
Speaker 1: were not carving the ride. The right of Disneyland is
Speaker 1: way more fun though, okay maybe, I mean it depends
Speaker 1: on how you feel about mountains. I suppose, right. So
Speaker 1: they carved that out of molecular glass that was reduced
Speaker 1: in scale to twenty five nanometers high. They also did
Speaker 1: some nano scale two D carvings, such as the IBM logo,
Speaker 1: and some always have to do right well many decades
Speaker 1: ago they did they were able to arrange atoms into
Speaker 1: the IBM. Yeah. They used an electron microscope to position
Speaker 1: atoms precisely to spell out IBM scanning microscope scanning, tunneling microscope. Yes,
Speaker 1: but those things are big and expensive, So what's the
Speaker 1: point of all this beautiful art. Well, in order to
Speaker 1: create like technologically useful nanoparticles and nanostructures, it would be
Speaker 1: great to have really fast, precise, and relatively cheap ways
Speaker 1: of sculpting and manipulating objects on the nanoscale. So this
Speaker 1: is a sort of silicon nano milling tool like you'd
Speaker 1: find on on a large scale and a factory to
Speaker 1: sort of just carve out the parts you need. Though,
Speaker 1: the silicon nano milling tool and it's programmed carving patterns
Speaker 1: are a step in the right direction, uh, because they
Speaker 1: say it's it's fast, it's cheap, and it's pretty sturdy.
Speaker 1: Though it's also worth saying that carving at this scale
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily like carving at the macro scale. Nanoscale fabrication
Speaker 1: and manipulation might make use of totally different forces and
Speaker 1: strategies than say a human sculptor who's wanting to work
Speaker 1: in stone or wood or something like that, and the
Speaker 1: ideal strategy probably depends on the nature of the substrate material.
Speaker 1: So like in this example, the substrates they were working
Speaker 1: with were sort of special materials that were designed for
Speaker 1: this purpose. Yeah, this is this is fascinating stuff to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and we're we haven't even finished
Speaker 1: all the different potential uses, right Yeah. And in medicine
Speaker 1: and health, nanoparticles and nanotubes are being researched for their
Speaker 1: abilities to push and pull specific articles, uh, specifically in
Speaker 1: liquids like water and blood. Um, Like, you could pull
Speaker 1: salter arsenic from a water supply. Um. In the case
Speaker 1: of arsenic, it so happens that iron oxide particles pick
Speaker 1: the stuff up and then can be magnetized for easy removal.
Speaker 1: Um Or circulating cancer cells or viruses can possibly be
Speaker 1: picked up out of blood, which is amazing, you guys. Um. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's also evidence that carbon nanotubes can cause cancer to
Speaker 1: develop because they're pointy like asbestos. Uh So, so that's
Speaker 1: the thing that researchers are working on a way around.
Speaker 1: But but overall, I mean, the possibilities of being able
Speaker 1: to to remove stuff what we don't want from stuff
Speaker 1: um or or possibly to use nanotubes to deliver drugs
Speaker 1: very precisely to particular cells is a completely amazing vista
Speaker 1: of health. On a similar note, there are doctors and
Speaker 1: engineers looking at using viruses themselves as the delivery tool,
Speaker 1: where you take the virus, you coat the virus with
Speaker 1: proteins that will allow it to essentially doc with cancerous cells,
Speaker 1: and then deliver a payload of essentially chemotherapy to the
Speaker 1: cancer cells. And the goal here would be very precise
Speaker 1: delivery of chemotherapy drugs, which we all know have some
Speaker 1: pretty nasty side effects. Yeah, and most of those side
Speaker 1: effects come from the fact that that you're exposing your
Speaker 1: entire body to to the chemo. It's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not it's not just poison to the cells, it's poison
Speaker 1: to you. Right, So if you are able to limit
Speaker 1: the exposure of cells to mainly the cancer cells, you
Speaker 1: or side effects will be decreased significantly. Now, there's no
Speaker 1: one is saying that they're going to get to a
Speaker 1: point where the cancer, you know, the chemotherapy is not
Speaker 1: going to have any side effects at all. Uh, we
Speaker 1: haven't reached that level of certain decision. But the hope
Speaker 1: is that this will dramatically cut down those those side effects,
Speaker 1: and which you know that would be a great benefit
Speaker 1: to people who have to undergo that kind of treatment.
Speaker 1: I want to look also at what research at the
Speaker 1: nanoscale can do to help improve computing. Sure, so right now,
Speaker 1: what does a computer chip look like. It's silicon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that with some little metal metal bits etched into it,
Speaker 1: sometimes so little that you can't even see the individual parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a standard. A standard. Processors may to silicon, and
Speaker 1: silicon is great, but it's not perfect in terms of
Speaker 1: things like energy efficiency and heat dissipation. Plus, is you
Speaker 1: keep cramming more and more processing power onto a chip
Speaker 1: and reducing the scale, you encounter problems like what we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, like the electron gating and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Well, what if you could make a computer
Speaker 1: out of something else, something other than silicon, like carbon
Speaker 1: of carbon based computer, organic computer? Well I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about a brain here, I'm talking about it something made
Speaker 1: out of carbon nanotubes. Yeah, if you can make it, right,
Speaker 1: if you can make it out a carbon, you can
Speaker 1: make it out of carbon nanotubes, which do have impressive
Speaker 1: electrical properties. Right, So we've talked about carbon nanotubes on
Speaker 1: this podcast before, but there's something that's really big in
Speaker 1: research at the nano scale. And uh so different people
Speaker 1: have been working on this idea. Can you make a
Speaker 1: computer processor out of carbon nanotubes that will perform well
Speaker 1: enough to perhaps replace silicon chips one day. I know
Speaker 1: IBM has been working on it. They have like a
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube transistor lab in Stanford. Researchers created the first
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube computer. Now it is pretty basic. One source
Speaker 1: I saw compared it to the power of Intel's first
Speaker 1: computer chip ever in nine So it's not like a
Speaker 1: like what you find in a MacBook pro. It is
Speaker 1: not at that scale, but it works um. And this
Speaker 1: is no easy task because carbon nanotubes can be really
Speaker 1: hard to work with, so much so that some people
Speaker 1: have dismissed the idea of carbon based computing. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get all the nanotubes arranged in the way you
Speaker 1: want them to just make them totally. And if if
Speaker 1: you're trying to create a semiconductor, you mentioned how the
Speaker 1: nanoscale arranging nanotubes in different positioning gives them different properties. Well,
Speaker 1: so you can have a bunch of nanotubes lined up
Speaker 1: to work as a semiconductor, but within them you might
Speaker 1: have these nanotubes that are not arranged correctly. They're metallic
Speaker 1: nanotubes and they're coming up the works, and so how
Speaker 1: do you deal with those? Well, these researchers at Stanford
Speaker 1: found some basic ways around these these starting problems, and
Speaker 1: we're able to get something off the ground. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so nanoscience research could help us build a more powerful
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube computer chip that would be smaller and more
Speaker 1: energy efficient than silicon, possibly faster too, since a major
Speaker 1: impediment speed and silicon chips is the tendency to build
Speaker 1: up heat, and of course carbon nanotubes could potentially allow
Speaker 1: heat to dissipate faster than the silicon. Right, very important stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, I see here. Now this is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: I have not had a chance to actually read over
Speaker 1: this research, so I'm curious to hear about it about
Speaker 1: nanoscale information, nanotechnology, nano particles actually letting us giving giving
Speaker 1: us insight on how life on Earth may have started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is one of the most interesting things to me.
Speaker 1: And this was actually a story that just came out
Speaker 1: the other day. I think it was yesterday, as the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, which were recording on February, I
Speaker 1: believe it's coming out. This was two days ago. Justtant
Speaker 1: passed forward thinkers. Okay, well, so here's the deal. So
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan, some researchers were working with
Speaker 1: simulations of nanoparticles how they behave when you apply energy
Speaker 1: to them in certain ways. And so they were looking
Speaker 1: at what happens when you take certain nanoparticles and put
Speaker 1: them into a spin. And what they found is that
Speaker 1: these nanoparticles naturally arranged themselves into what they called quote
Speaker 1: living rotating crystals. And the researchers were investigating how basically
Speaker 1: disordered groups of particles can be made to self as
Speaker 1: symbol into various architectures under different physical circumstances. So you
Speaker 1: apply energy in one way or another, and you see
Speaker 1: what types of clumps these things form into. Right, you
Speaker 1: can think of it the the example in the article
Speaker 1: that I think that you linked to was was thinking
Speaker 1: about them rotating like like pin wheels, and the pin
Speaker 1: wheels that are rotating in the same direction will, well,
Speaker 1: we'll catch each other at the edges and kind of
Speaker 1: link up and form a giant group of of pin wheels.
Speaker 1: They're they're almost like interlocking gears in a way, although
Speaker 1: they behave in ways that are counterintuitive to the ways
Speaker 1: we would think they would behave on the macro scale. Um.
Speaker 1: But this is really important in nanoscience and nanoengineering because
Speaker 1: if you want to build any kind of complex machinery
Speaker 1: or architecture at that scale, it's really difficult to manipulate
Speaker 1: the parts directly to do it by hand. Remember that's
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with that first thing, like
Speaker 1: carving them out. It's hard to take the tiny little
Speaker 1: particles and put them where you want them. So instead,
Speaker 1: one way to think about this kind of engineering would
Speaker 1: be to say, well, what kind of structures naturally arise,
Speaker 1: say when you just like when you shake the snow globe,
Speaker 1: how do the particles stick together? And can we use
Speaker 1: that in a way that will help us with engineering. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the researchers found that by applying energy causing
Speaker 1: the particles to rotate like pin wheels, there was this
Speaker 1: sort of natural tribal grouping where the particles organized themselves
Speaker 1: into complex, larger structures. And so, on one hand, the
Speaker 1: structures they discovered in their simulation might be useful for
Speaker 1: engineering to create what they called like a nanopump, which
Speaker 1: would sort of move particles around within a tiny machine.
Speaker 1: But the researchers also pointed out that the experiments like
Speaker 1: this and research like this could actually help us learn
Speaker 1: about the chemical machines that make up living organisms and
Speaker 1: how they were first assembled, presumably from the same type
Speaker 1: of chaotic masses of particles stimulated in one way or
Speaker 1: another by energy coming in from the outside. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I mean, it's it's interesting when uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I love it whenever any sort of exploratory science starts
Speaker 1: coming up with possible insight into areas that you weren't
Speaker 1: even initially considering when you started out on whatever experiment
Speaker 1: you were doing. And that's kind of what this sounds like. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I do certainly want to make it clear that they
Speaker 1: were humble. I mean that they weren't saying like, we've
Speaker 1: discovered how life began on Earth, and they're just saying like,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of research that could someday lead
Speaker 1: us to answers to this question, which is really fast.
Speaker 1: But this computer simulation was doing this thing, and when
Speaker 1: they said living rotating crystals, they don't mean that the
Speaker 1: thing suddenly came alive. They simply mean that they displayed
Speaker 1: self self assembling behavior sort of the organizational properties that
Speaker 1: we look at in in organic molecules we associate with life.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I You know, of course, time will
Speaker 1: will tell whether or not that particular line of inquiry
Speaker 1: has any substance to it. As people do more and
Speaker 1: more research based upon that kind of approach, whether it's
Speaker 1: through simulation or further down the line where we're able
Speaker 1: to do this on a practical level, it'll be really
Speaker 1: interesting to see if that holds up, and maybe it won't.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing, like we've always said in the show,
Speaker 1: is that ultimately you learn through this this process. So
Speaker 1: whether it's something works or not, you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: important on an individual scale, but ultimately it's important on
Speaker 1: just building up our knowledge. Oh yeah, sometimes something not
Speaker 1: working is a lot more valuable than it working. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: If something works, then essentially what that means is that
Speaker 1: you've confirmed a hypothesis, which is important play it certainly,
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't work, that means there's something else
Speaker 1: going on that you haven't taken into account, and that
Speaker 1: can be really interesting. It's part of why if you
Speaker 1: ever read anything from the scientists at the Large Hadron
Speaker 1: Collider where they were talking about discovering the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are saying, I kind of
Speaker 1: hope it's not, because if it's not the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: that suggests that there's more that we need to learn.
Speaker 1: But if it is the Higgs boson, it pretty much
Speaker 1: confirms the hypothesis. And then we just got confirmation. Well,
Speaker 1: there's still so much more we need to learn. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of some of them felt aesthetically like, well,
Speaker 1: once we got the Higgs boson, now it's it's too easy. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: or at least now now that's now this question rather
Speaker 1: than answered. It's like an answer that someone proposed has
Speaker 1: been more or less confirmed, and that uh, and that seems,
Speaker 1: at least on the service level, to be a little
Speaker 1: less interesting when your when your job is all about
Speaker 1: answering questions. I'm just saying, don't walk away from this
Speaker 1: discussion with the idea that all the questions about physics
Speaker 1: have been settled. Well, certainly not. I can only blog
Speaker 1: so quickly, Joe, I'll get I'll get around to it eventually,
Speaker 1: all right. So yeah, that kind of wraps up our
Speaker 1: discussion about why the nanoscale is so interesting and why
Speaker 1: it's so important. And obviously we'll do more episodes specifically
Speaker 1: about nanotechnology and its applications in the future, will look
Speaker 1: at very specific cases and explain the development because this is,
Speaker 1: you know, a huge industry about a very little thing.
Speaker 1: Uh that we can if we could do, we could
Speaker 1: have just a podcast, like just a series about nanotechnology
Speaker 1: and not run out of things to say for a
Speaker 1: long long time. So we will do more episodes in
Speaker 1: the future, but for now we're wrapping this up. Remember
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for topics that we should
Speaker 1: tackle in the future about the future, let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us an email our addresses f W Thinking at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com, or get in touch with us online
Speaker 1: through Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus. Our handle it all
Speaker 1: three of those FW Thinking, and don't forget to visit
Speaker 1: f W thinking dot com. That's our home page where
Speaker 1: we have all the podcast episodes, all the videos that
Speaker 1: we've done, all the blog posts, and other information including
Speaker 1: fun facts about your beloved hosts. So go check that
Speaker 1: out and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic and the future of technology,
Speaker 1: visit forward Thinking dot com. Brought to you buy Toyota
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