The Digital Civilizations Interviews

What’s it all about?

Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are the names given to research that aims to understand, manipulate or produce matter on a scale of between 1 and 100 nanometres. To clarify the dimensions we’re talking about, just think that the diameter of a human hair measures around 20 000 nanometres… However, the important thing is not the size, but the fact that at this level, lots of things happen that don’t on a macroscopic scale:

• At the nanometric size, matter doesn’t behave as it normally does. To be more precise, certain phenomena – especially quantum ones – that are “masked” at a larger size become dominant. Consequently, opaque substances become transparent, inert matter becomes a catalyst, yellow gold becomes red, and silicone no longer isolates. It therefore becomes possible to research physical, magnetic and optical effects that were hitherto beyond our reach.

• This is the scale of molecules, inert matter, and living organisms. As a result, the distinction between Materials Science, Chemistry and even Biology is beginning to fade. These disciplines use the same tools. They are interested in, or they try to produce, combinations that use the same mechanical, chemical or electrical reactions. At this scale in particular, traditionally “trickle down” methods of construction (you trim, etch and reduce an already existing material) give way to “trickle up” approaches (you put together the base components, atoms or molecules, or – more accurately these days – you help them assemble themselves like they do in nature, but while trying to guide the process) that are usually the domain of Chemistry… or of life.

• Much more than in many other fields, in this one it is hard to distinguish between science and technology. The tools that allow us to explore matter on this kind of scale are the same ones that allow us to manipulate it (this is even one of the characteristics of quantum objects, whose state is not independent of the conditions in which one is observing them). Moreover, the hope that we have in nanotechnologies is encouraging businesses to invest heavily in research, even long-term research (half of the world’s nanotechnological R&D budgets come from private institutions), which means that this research is being oriented towards its uses, which leads in turn to the patenting of many discoveries – another interesting convergence of biotechnologies and IT.

• 4- Because objects as small of these must be able to be used in devices on a human scale in order to be of any use, nanosciences are also converging with complex sciences, particularly those concerned with the brain’s function, or with living systems. Whence comes the “C” (cognition) from the acronym NBIC.

What stage is nanoscience at?

The nanotechnological “project“ is already almost half a century old. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman was the first to set the objective of the nanometre, during a 1959 talk entitled, “There is plenty of space at the bottom.” Japan’s Norio Taniguchi first suggested the term “nanotechnologies” in 1974, which the militant scientist Eric Drexler popularised in the 1980’s. Concrete developments were made possible in the 1980s by the invention of tunnel effect microscopes and the atomic force microscope (even this early on, it was the brainchild of a computer company, IBM). The most high-tech of these microscopes, which don’t simply “see” matter with the help of optical instruments, but which analyse and reconstitute it in computerised form, allow us to simultaneously to both observe and manipulate these particles. The first base materials that could be produced and used on an industrial scale date from the end of the ‘80s: called fullerenes, they are miniature carbon balls and nanotubes, wires that are at once very fine and light, extremely flexible and resistant, and excellent conductors of heat or electricity. Numerous other materials have joined them in the time since, but nanotubes remain the main base material for industrial nanotechnology today. Today, there exist a large number of products that already incorporate nanotechnology into their design: more reactive and durable tennis balls and rackets, sun creams offering greater levels of protection and resistance, crease-resistant fabrics and wall coatings that are water and dust resistant, scratch-resistant sunglasses, and many electronic and computer products.

Medical uses are more experimental, and nanotechnology has already helped reduce malign tumours or help handicapped people regain the use of a damaged organ. And yet some of the most ambitious plans (particularly “molecular assembly,” which consists of the large-scale manufacture of materials or objects from an assembly of elementary atoms and molecules) are still distant, if not impossible dreams. Today, we’re still in the “artistic” stage.

Nanotechnologies are both at the fundamental research stage, and at the initial use stage. The move from speculation to investment, from theory to practice, from experimentation to the market is happening very fast, which makes the whole thing feel like a formidable scientific and creative cauldron – even recalling the “sorcerer’s apprentice” from time to time.