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Nanotechnology Essay

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Nanomaterials are at the leading edge of the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology. Their unique size-dependent properties make these materials superior and indispensable in many areas of human activity.
Nanotechnology (Feyman, 1991) is enabling technology that deals with nano-meter sized objects. It is expected that nanotechnology will be developed at several levels: materials, devices and systems. The nanomaterials level is the most advanced at present, both in scientific knowledge and in commercial applications. A decade ago, nanoparticles were studied because of their size-dependent physical and chemical properties (Murray et. al., 2000). Now they have entered a commercial exploration period (Mazzola, 2003; Paull, 2003).
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al., 2003)
- Tumour destruction via heating (hyperthermia) (Yoshida, 1999)
- Separation and purification of biological molecules and cells Molday and MacKenzie, 1982)
- MRI contrast enhancement (Weissleder et. al., 1990)
- Phagokinetic studies (Parak et. al., 2002) As mentioned above, the fact that nanoparticles exist in the same size domain as proteins makes nanomaterials suitable for bio tagging or labelling. However, size is just one of many characteristics of nanoparticles that itself is rarely sufficient if one is to use nanoparticles as biological tags. In order to interact with biological target, a biological or molecular coating or layer acting as a bioinorganic interface should be attached to the nanoparticle. Examples of biological coatings may include antibodies, biopolymers like collagen (Sinani et. al., 2003), or monolayers of small molecules that make the nanoparticles biocompatible (Zhang et. al., 2002).
Benefits and Risks of Using Nanoparticles
Benefits
Nanotechnology has been labelled the new technology of the 21st century, comparable to the invention of electricity. The driving force is mainly the recent discoveries that matter change properties and behavior in the small nanoscale.
For example there has been observed size and structure dependant changes optical, electrical, interfacial and tensional properties. Further, the reactivity, for example the catalytic activity of nanomaterials is often superior to their larger counterparts.
By tuning the

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