Nanomaterials for practical functional uses

The term nanotechnology, which enjoys wide public use, is a concept that covers a wide range of developments in the field of nanoscale electronic omponents, along with its decades-old application in nanocarbon-black particles or silicates manufactured using the sol–gel process. When we efer to nanotechnology today, the term is limited to dealing with particles or assemblies whose dimensions range in size from a few nanometres p to around 100 nm. Intensive development work is now being carried out in new fields in many industrial and university research facilities, with he help of nanoscale particles or subassemblies. Along with the already familiar items, this applications-oriented research has covered such new evelopments as carbon nanotubes or electronic circuits. All materials are composed of grains, which consist of many atoms. Grains of conventional aterials vary in size from tens of microns to one or more millimetres. Nanomaterials are no longer merely a laboratory curiosity and have now eached the stage of commercialization being lead by activity, often government supported, in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, orea, Germany and in recent years China and Australia. This is the opening of a whole new science in some respects, and the usefulness to our veryday lives will become increasingly apparent. The potential of nanominerals, as just one sector of nanomaterials technology have some very eal and useful outcomes: