Better Materials. Smarter Devices
Nowadays many companies are using nanotechnology to make better materials from the rubber used for tires to stain-repellent fabrics for clothing.
The name Zyvex pops up whenever you search for nanotechnology companies online. This company has a line of nano-additives and enhanced carbon nanotubes that add strength to composite materials. Using these they can improve thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties of various materials.
In clothing manufacture, Gore-Tex offers a jacket made of a waterproof polymer membrane with embedded nano-size carbon particles that resist taking on a static charge. Such anti-static protection could be used, for example, in firefighters’ suits to help them avoid static electricity that could spark fire in a hazardous situation.
Some companies are focused on material performance. They are working on nanotubes and nanorods, nano-ceramics, nanostructured metal alloys, and self-assembled block polymers.
Nanotechnology can be found even in the sports. In France the special tennis rackets have been already produced. They use carbon nanotubes for higher torsion in the racket and flexibility of the racket strings.
Plenty of companies are making equipment for testing and manipulation of nano-size materials. Environmentally-controlled equipment can test reactions of various sample materials in different environments. Some of the nano-scanners that are manufactured can be used for high-resolution imaging of nano-size materials.
ANSWER THE QUESTIONS:
1. What is the function of nano-additives? 2. What material properties can be improved with the help of nanotechnology? 3. Give an example of anti-static protection. 4. Tell about the advantages of smarter devices. 5. What is the difference between conventional and nanomaterials? 6. What are the possible disadvantages of nanomaterials? 7. What devices would you like to improve or make smarter with the help of nanotechnology?
Grammar exercises
Exercise 1. Translate from Russian into English.
1. If and when the fully functional mechanical nanobot emerges, as it most likely will in the next few years, its primary material may be silicon. 2. If nanobots were to be produced on a large scale their enduring materials would not be as dangerous as all the microchips and computer electronics currently sitting in our landfills, but they would still be another small drain on our natural resources. 3. If the motive power has been generated by inevitable chemical or physical reactions, the nanobot will still qualify as autonomous. 4. If the nanobot robot's nano-cells keep replicating out of control, causing systems to malfunction, this would be robot cancer. 5. If the nanobots go haywire and mount an excessive immune response to benign outside material, it may just be robo allergies.
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Exercise 2. Read and translate the text. Find infinitives and define their functions.
Brain for nanobots?
To build a true nanorobot - a completely self-contained electronic, electric, or mechanical device to do such activities as manufacturing at the nanoscale - many breakthrough advances will need to be achieved. One of them is the issue of controlling large numbers of devices, for instance how to build and program the 'brains' of these machines. Another issue is to separate the concept of science fiction style 'thinking' robots (artificial intelligence) from a more realistic (yet still distant) concept of machines that can be programmed to perform a limited task in a more or less autonomous way for a period of time.
These tasks could range from fabricating nanoscale components to performing medical procedures inside the body. For nanoscale machinery this would require the availability of nanoscale control units like computers. Researchers in Japan are now reporting a self organizing 16-bit parallel processing molecular assembly that brings us a step closer to building such a nanoscale processor. The conceptual hurdles of building a nanoscale computer are still huge. Even if you get a sufficiently powerful nanoscale processor to work, the information to be processed needs to be fed into it and the results read from it, for example the input/output devices also would need to be nanosized. So would be the power supply. Nevertheless, new research potentially shows a novel way of building parallel processors at the atomic level. Researchers in Japan have built a machine assembly consisting of 17 identical molecules of an organic compound called duroquinone (DRQ) which is capable of executing 16 instructions at a time.
Exercise 3. Read short articles. Find complex, compound and asydentic sentences. Explain your choice.
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Gold. The study of gold nanoparticles is very important in the field of nanomaterials because they have many potential applications. For example, they have been used the identification of the DNA sequences associated with disease, as well as bodily invaders like viruses. These nanoparticles could also serve as the basis for new technologies that will render obsolete the energy intensive methods currently used to fabricate computer semiconductors. These materials would therefore be excellent components of nanoelectronics, optics and biology.
Silicon. Silicon, the most important semiconductor material, plays an important role in the field of the nanomaterials such as the one that plays in the area of microelectronics materials. Silicon-based photo-electric integration is one of the highlights of modern science research. Crystal silicon is an indirect band material, and its light emission efficiency at room temperature is very low. Recently, one-dimensional silicon nanomaterials had been prepared successfully by many methods, stimulating intensive interest. Silicon nanowires are particularly interesting because they are expected to exhibit unusual confinement effects on electrical and optical properties due to its low dimension and high surface-to-volume ratio and fulfill the technology requirements for integration.
Silver. The study of silver nanomaterials has a great importance because the properties they present allow its applications in optics, electric and biological areas. Recently, one-dimensional silver nanostructures, such as nanowires and nanobelts, have been received considerable attention because the “surface enhanced Raman” property which enhances of their potential applications in nano-electronic and biological devices. In addition, exploration of the formation mechanism of nanostructures for further understanding the detailed chemical and physical properties of these nanomaterials is also an important issue of materials research in nanometer regime.
Exercise 4.It’s ineresting to know.
Nanomaterials can be natural or manmade. For example, nanoparticles are produced naturally by plants, algae and volcanic activity. They have also been created for thousands of years as products of cooking and burning, and more recently from vehicle exhausts. Some proteins in the body, which control things like flexing muscles and repairing cells, are nanosized. We can set out to make nanomaterials in a variety of different ways. Some nanomaterials can assemble themselves from their components. Carbon fragments, for example, can self-assemble into nanotubes in this way. Another approach used in the production of computer chips is to etch nanomaterials from larger pieces of material.
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algae – водоросли to etch - гравировать; травить (на металле, стекле)
Exercise 5.Translate the sentences from Russian into English using right conjunction where it is necessary.
1. Дешевые, легкие и прочные наноматериалы со временем вытеснят большинство металлов и пластмасс. 2. Углеродные нанотрубки стали в сто раз прочнее, в десять раз легче и в тысячи раз больше проводят электричества. 3. Toyota уже добавляет нанотрубки в бамперы автомобилей, но массового применения пока еще нет. 4. Это связано тем, что пока нанотрубки получают примитивными, малопроизводительными методами, что является причиной их слишком высокой для повседневного применения ценой: $50 - $100 за грамм. 5. Однако в лабораториях Концерна “Наноиндустрия” созданы образцы промышленного оборудования, производящего высококачественные нанотрубки стоимостью на порядок меньше.
Vocabulary exercises
Exercise 1. Read the text and then decide which statements are true/false.
Let us examine in particular nanocomposites based on polymeric materials. There are several varieties of polymeric nanocomposites. For example, adding such small amounts as 2% by volume of silicate nanoparticles to a polyimide resin increases the strength by 100%. Addition of nanoparticles not only improves the mechanical properties, but also has been shown to improve thermal stability, in some cases allowing use of polymer-matrix nanocomposites an additional 100°C above the normal service conditions.
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Decrease in material flammability has also been studied, an especially important property for transportation applications where choice of material is influenced by safety concerns. Clay/polymer nanocomposites have been considered as matrix materials for fiber-based composites destined for aerospace components. Aircraft and spacecraft components require lightweight materials with high strength and stiffness, among other qualities. Nanocomposites, with their superior thermal resistance, are also attractive for such applications as housings for electronics.
Others have examined the electrical properties of nanocomposites, with an eye to developing new conductive materials. The use of polymer-based nanocomposites has been expanded to anti-corrosion coatings on metals, and thin-film sensors. Polymer-matrix nanocomposites can also be used to package films, an application that exploits their superior barrier properties and low permeability.
Decide which statements are True/False. Prove your answer.
1. Common composites and nanocomposites are just the same.
2. Thermal stability, flammability and electrical properties are greatly influenced by any amount of additive.
3. Nanocomposites have limited applications.
4. Nanocomposites, with better thermal resistance, are used as housings for electronics.
5. Addition of nanoparticles worsens the mechanical properties.
Exercise 2. Read the text and write an annotation.
Lighter materials will make air and space travel more economical
Today, most airplanes are made from metal despite the fact that diamond has a strength-to-weight ratio over 50 times that of aerospace aluminum. Diamond is expensive, we can't make it in the shapes we want, and it shatters. Nanotechnology will let us inexpensively make shatterproof diamond (with a structure that might resemble diamond fibers) in exactly the shapes we want. This would let us make a Boeing 747 whose unloaded weight was 50 times lighter but just as strong.
Today, travel in space is very expensive and reserved for an elite few. Nanotechnology will dramatically reduce the costs and increase the capabilities of space ships and space flight. The strength-to-weight ratio and the cost of components are absolutely critical to the performance and economy of space ships: with nanotechnology, both of these parameters will be improved… Beyond inexpensively providing remarkably light and strong materials for space ships, nanotechnology will also provide extremely powerful computers with which to guide both those ships and a wide range of other activities in space.
Exercise 3. What do you think about this? Prove you opinion.
The variety of nanomaterials is great and their range of properties and possible applications appear to be enormous, from extraordinarily tiny electronic devices, including miniature batteries, to parts of automobiles. General Motors claims to have the first vehicle to use the materials for exterior automotive applications, in running boards on its mid-size vans. These molecular-sized electronic circuits will be the most important scientific development in 20012.
Automotive engineering makes more and more use of the large variety of innovative applications based on nanotechnology. Nanomaterials promise valuable progress by new functionalities and tailored materials, in particular safety and comfort applications. Anti-reflective coatings, scratch and wear resistance, self-cleaning surfaces or tunable properties like color or damping are representative examples.
Exercise 4. Read the text about Nanomaterials. Learn the words. Give the antonyms to the adjectives in italics.
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