If you pick up a sea shell at the beach this summer, you’re looking at
an example of nanotechnology. As this ScienCentral news video reports, sea
shells could be the inspiration for the next generation of electronic chips.
How To Grow Electronics
Sea shells are a natural example of a primary goal of nanotechnology: useful
structures that build themselves. Some nanotechnologists have studied how
shells assemble themselves, with a view to making new miniscule structures
in similar ways.
At Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, materials chemist/bioengineerAngela
M. Belcher belongs to the research team at the Institute
for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). The mission of the ISN is to design
the military uniform of the future, to protect soldiers in unprecedented ways.
For example, the uniform might be able to harden into wearable armor when its
wearer turns on built-in electronics to create an electromagnetic field.
But such a uniform would require wearable electronics, even smaller and more
powerful than the most advanced devices we have today. To find ways of making
nanoscale electronics, some nanotechnologists are pursuing molecular
self-assembly. “What we want to do,” Belcher explains, “is
not only control the structure of new materials we make, but also have those
materials pattern themselves into functional devices.”
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