Size DOES matter

I have a newfound fascination and fondness for men who possess the beguiling and amazing powers of the very small. While "small" may not be an adjective with which the noun "men" would want to be nudged, it is not just I who seem to be taken. Apparently, cutting-edge, hi-tech companies owe a debt to these men of science who have untiringly worked to make the "small" potent stuff write things and form shapes and sizes that could do wonders. Science has roused industries and the latter are gearing up to create the coming revolution of the small – the human-choreographed dance of the atom, commonly known as nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is something that countries, industries and tech gurus are now in a feverish race for to pursue with the US, Japan and China as the countries holding the top 3 positions in the number of patent applications.

This human invasion into a world this small was ushered in by the invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope in 1981 by scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer of the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory. Their invention allowed for the imaging of individual atoms, and won Binnig and Rohrer the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1986. In 1985, Binnig and Christoph Gerber of IBM Zurich, along with Calvin Quate of Stanford, invented another nanotool – the atomic force microscope. It was not shocking then that in 1990, another IBM scientist Don Eigler with his colleagues, made scientific record, when they spelled out the letters ‘IBM’ using 35 xenon atoms. Although I would have preferred a somewhat more poignant representation of human genius, other than the name of a corporation, writing "IBM" with atoms, made a very clear and indelible point: we have arrived at Nature’s innermost space and intend to stay and move around that world to make it work for us.

How small are we talking about? A billionth of a meter. Difficult to imagine? Let us just put it this way, a pinhead is about a million nanometers wide in diameter and to answer the proverbial question how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, you can therefore say that if one angel is a nanometer wide, you can line a million of them up side by side East to West a-la Chorus Line on a pinhead! What set off my nano-version of the musical A Chorus Line is the June 2006 issue of the National Geographic that had superbly creative images so we can mentally map these very small things, guided by an excellent article "Nano’s Big Future" by Jennifer Kahn.

I had images in my dreams of these tiny angels on a pinhead singing and dancing to the song from A Chorus Line, "One… singular sensation every little step we take… One thrilling combination, every move that we make…" In the National Geographic magazine, Kahn also mentioned that the creators of the beautiful stained-glass windows of cathedrals made in the medieval age, did not know that it was the gold dust particles mixed into the making of glass, that were responsible for the color dance of the "stained" angels and saints in those glass windows. Nanotechnology is not the same as miniaturization. That is because at that tiny level, these atoms and molecules lose the personalities they had when they were "bigger" such that, for instance, putting nuggets of gold in glass will not have the color-making effects of nano-gold in stained glass. Sticky hairy toes like that of the gecko alone could never make it climb walls and stick upside down but when these hairs are "nano," they behave rather differently which accounts for the gecko’s legendary grip. For metals, the docile aluminum strip cut into pieces at the nano level would explode, as Kahn too pointed out. Carbon atoms, which form shapes and sizes we are familiar with like coal and soot, could, at the nano level, line up to form tubes that can conduct electricity far more efficiently (i.e., not much energy lost as heat in transmission, unlike in traditional metal wires we use) and can even store energy from the Sun or from hydrogen fuel cells.

The biggest challenge now is how to make these carbon tubes very long to allow for transmission. As Bill Bryson so picturesquely wrote in his great bestseller A Short History of Nearly Everything, carbon is quite versatile because it is very "sociable," life-of-the-party kind of element, easily bonding with other molecules, and has this ability to form "conga lines" with other atoms. And scientists are finding this out, making prototype materials made of carbon nanotubes that shame any Kevlar (bullet-proof) material. They are also now experimenting with car coating made of this very strong material. But one cannot just arrange atoms in any shape like with clay. It would still depend on their charges. You can either make nanotech structures grow from down up or start with a big material and then cut it up. Nanotech mostly deals with the former. Therein lies the scientific challenge and the excitement of finding out the new properties of old atoms.

Scientists are also working on experiments with cancer that has not yet spread to a level that could be detected, sending nanoparticles to amplify these signals for detection by doctors. For surely detected cancers, scientists are testing nanoparticles that act as "messengers" to target only the cancerous cells while permeating healthy cells without harming or killing them. One scientist who had both a personal and professional stake in this aspect of nanotech was one with a name that seemed to foreshadow his passion – Dr. Richard Smalley. Professionally, he shared with Robert Curl and Harold Kroto the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a very important carbon molecule – one with 60 atoms arranged and connected like a wired ball with a flat top and bottom. The shape is called geodesic although scientists kick around the term "buckyball" to refer to it too, after Buckminster Fuller who invented that specific shape. This carbon molecule was the icon for the power of nanotechnology – it was a hundred fold stronger than steel but weighed only a sixth of it. But cancer-stricken Smalley could not wait for nanotech to advance enough to cure cancers like his. He died in October 2005, saying it may be too late for him but he is convinced that nanotech will eventually help cure certain cancers.

Green industries are also looking at nano-particles to filter pollution in waters where these tiny atoms form a sort of sieve that could filter even bacteria from waters. Essentially, these nano-sieves will be released or installed in the polluted waters and these small wonders will do their job of catching what we do not want mixed in the water. Scientists are still working on this to make sure that these nanoparticles do not eventually accumulate in the water we drink or in the food chain and negate all the benefits we envisioned from using them.

Nano-wonders do not only cover "hardware," in fact some of them are already on your face. Sunblock lotions already have nano-particles that take care of absorbing the ultraviolet rays before your skin does. Always spilling wine on your suit or if you are like my nephew, always staining your uniform? Nanoparticles are now in garments that bead up liquids or make dirt roll off from the garment. The BBC News even once reported that nanoparticles are even employed to stand vigil in your socks to absorb odor and prevent fungi!

The National Geographic has, for over a hundred years, mapped out our understanding of Nature in images. Centuries ago, the idea of the conquest was always about grasping and mapping the vastness of the continents, the oceans, the planet, the universe. In recent decades, human minds have come to the middle part of an hourglass where we sort of mirror the same vastness but now focused the other way – on the more intimate, tiniest spaces of Nature and find that they are as strange, powerful and humbling. May we be much more enlightened "conquerors" of these worlds.

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