Bringing the ‘nanoworld’ within everyone’s reach

In the rarefied world of high-end physics and chemistry, homing in on and manipulating individual atoms like Legos – stacking, sorting, arranging – is no big deal.

Details: “Exploring the Nanoworld,” available through the Institute for Chemical Education,costs $24 through Wednesday, May 31. Order online, by email, ICE@chem.wisc.edu, or by calling 262-3033. A companion Web site, provides more information, including a series of movies that demonstrate aspects of the nanoworld.

This revolution in Lilliput, the ability to see and maneuver atoms one at a time, heralds a world where wondrous new materials, microscopic medical devices and custom-designed drugs will significantly enhance our quality of life.

But while scientists and engineers have a clear vision of the nanoworld, the now-accessible world of atoms, how are the rest of us going to learn about this radical and potentially far-reaching technology?

The answer, according to scientists from the National Science Foundation-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the UW–Madison, may lie in a small kit containing a few simple hands-on demonstrations and the boiled-down knowledge of nanoscience encoded in an easy-to-understand picture book.

“What we’re trying to do is communicate to people what nanoscience and nanotechnology are all about,” says Arthur B. Ellis, Meloche-Bascom Professor of Chemistry and a developer of “Exploring the Nanoworld.”

Using simple, inexpensive materials – including a light-emitting diode (LED), a refrigerator magnet, a short section of fiber optic cable, a piece of “memory metal” wire, a diffraction slide and a hand lens – the kit provides a gateway to the nanoworld, a world a billion times smaller than anything humans typically encounter.

“We don’t have direct experience with the nanoworld,” says Ellis, “but it has so much potential as the basis for an emerging technology that people need to understand what it is.”

Ellis developed the kit with George Lisensky of Beloit College and Karen Nordell, S. Michael Condren and Diana Malone at UW–Madison.

The kit’s components and the detailed, easy-to-read booklet describing the nanoworld lend hands-on insight into a technology that could change our world. For example, the influence of nanotech on LED technology – and some sense of atomic scale – is illustrated in the kit’s booklet. It shows how the semiconductors at the heart of LEDs can be grown one atomic layer at a time and how, by varying the kinds of atoms used, LEDs can be made to shine in all the colors of the rainbow. The booklet also illustrates the increasing influence of these technologies on our lives by showing LEDs in use in everything from traffic lights to stadium-sized message boards.

The ability to orchestrate atomic positions holds the promise of amazing new materials as well. One existing example is “memory metal,” an alloy composed of nickel and titanium atoms, that, after being bent out of shape, can be restored to its original form by being exposed to heat. The key to understanding how memory metal works, says Ellis, lies in how the atoms in the metal use the energy in hot water or hot air to change positions.

Nanotech also promises to revolutionize medicine by permitting the modification of DNA molecules. It may also permit the manufacture of medical devices so small they could comfortably float in the bloodstream. The booklet describes a variety of commercial products – surgical stents to keep blood vessels open, eyeglasses that spring back into shape after being bent, braces that keep uniform pressure on teeth – already in use.