Week 1: Introduction to Nanotechnology, Part 1

1.1
Hello my name is Hossam Haick and I will serve as the lecturer of the MOOC course on
nanotechnology and nanosensors. I wish you a successful course on the great journey into the
amazing world of nanotechnology and nanosensors. Today I will make an introduction to the field of
nantechnology. I will start with defining the main phrases that include the word nano. Then I will
present the main and unique features of the materials and technologies that exist at the nanoscale
level. I will end this topic by making a generic presentation of the main categories of the materials
that exist at the nanoscale level. The prefix nano is derived from the ancient Greek nanos, which
means dwarf. Today, nano is used as a prefix that means, billionth or a factor of 10 to the minus 9.
Coupling the word nano with the unit meter brings the term nanometer, which actually indicates a
unit of spatial measurement that is one billionth of a meter. With this in mind, we shall define
nanotechnology as the science, engineering, and technology conducted at the scale that ranges
between one to 100 nanometers. The idea and the concept behind the nanotechnology started with
a talk entitled, There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom, by the physicist Richard Feynman, at the
American Physical Society meeting, at the California Institute of Technology, CalTech, in a meeting
that was held in 1959. In his talk, Feynman described a process in which scientists would be able to
manipulate and control individual atoms as well as individual molecules. Over a decade later,
Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology during his explorations and research in
the field of ultra precise machining process. However, practicing the modern nanotechnology
began only in 1981, when the scanning tunneling microscope, which basically could see individual
atoms or could see individual molecules, was developed and used. To demonstrate the length of
scale of the nanometer, I will present first the units or measures used in our daily life. If we cut a
meter into 100 equal pieces, then each piece would be one centimeter in size. This is equivalent to
the size of your pinky finger or a sugar cube. If we cut a centimeter into 100 equal pieces, each
piece will be one millimeter. A cent coin is approximately one millimeter thick, and a grain of sand
ranges from 0.1 millimeter to 2 millimeter in size. Objects as small as millimeter can be seen with
our own eyes. However, when things get smaller than a millimeter, it gets harder and harder to see
them with just our eyes. If we cut up a millimeter into 100 equal pieces, each piece will be a
micrometer. In other words, a micrometer is equal to one millionth of the meter. For example, the
diameter of hair is about 40 to 50 micrometers wide, red blood cells are six to ten micrometers in
diameter and many types of bacteria typically measure five to 20 micrometers in diameter or in
size. Things on this scale usually cannot be seen with our own eyes, but rather, can be seen with a
magnifying glass or with a microscope. If we cut a micrometer, now, into 1,000 equal pieces, then
each piece will be one nanometer. In other words, a nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter.
When things are as small as the nanometer you cannot see them with your own eyes, or even you
cannot see them with a light microscope. Objects this small require special tools of imaging. Things
that have a nanometer scale include viruses which have a characteristic size of 30 to 50
nanometer. DNA, which have a diameter of one to two nanometer. Buckyballs with have a
characteristic size or diameter of one nanometer. And also carbon nanotubes which have a
characteristic diameter of one nanometer. In this context I would like to clarify that atoms are
smaller than a nanometer. Actually, one atom measures 0.1 to 0.3 nanometer, and this, of course,
depends on the element that is examined. Now I will give you some examples for objects from our
daily life that are measured in nanometer. One inch is equal to 25.4 million nanometers, and a

sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers think. A human hair measures roughly 50,000 to
100,000 nanometers in diameter, and please note that your fingernails grows one nanometer every
second. It is acceptable that a picture is worth 1,000 of words, and that a video is worth thousand
of pictures. Therefore, our, I will add with the presented short video to further demonstrate the
meaning of nano. Of course, I will give the girl in the video the privilege to talk on her behalf.
[MUSIC] >> Hey. Do you know what nano means? It means small, very small. It is a million times
smaller than the smallest measure on a ruler. If you want to get an idea for how small a nanometer
really is, you'll need to take a piece of hair from your head. Go on, it won't hurt. Got it. Now, take a
good, close look at that strand of hair. Not much to look at, is it? If we were to shrink you down,
smaller than the smallest thing you can see with the naked eye, you will find that your piece of hair
starts to look a lot more interesting. You are now about the size of a red blood cell. Your strand of
hair is a massive tree compared to you. Even at this size, you're still about 1000 times too big to be
considered nano. To get you down to the nano scale, we will have to shrink you to about 100
nanometers tall. Hey, where are all the lights? You are now smaller than the wavelength of visible
light. You are practically invisible. But for the sake of demonstration, I think we should turn on some
lights. At this size, the red blood cell is 1,000 times bigger than you are. It is like an enormous
stadium. Welcome to the nanoscale. You could probably hold the common cold virus in your hands
quite comfortably now. The rhinovirus is only about 30 nanometers across, and is nearly impossible
to see next to the red blood cell. A red blood cell is too big to be considered nano. However, it's
made up of all kinds of nanomaterials. If you were to look close enough, you would see that the
outer walls of the cell are stabilized by a flexible mesh-like protein skeleton. The bars and
connectors that make up this mesh are considered part of a nanomaterial. Without these
reinforcing nanostructures, the cell would be much more fragile, and not nearly as flexible. It
wouldn't stand a chance in your body. Everything is made up of nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are
an arrangement of molecules and atoms that, when combined create stable building blocks that
can be made into larger, more complex materials and structures. >> After this demonstration I will
give right now an example for the importance of miniaturization ability of the nanotechnology. A
such example, let's have a look on how cell phones developed from the bulky walkie talkie to
today's miniaturized architecture. In 1985 mobile phones used to look huge in size and with a
pretty long antenna. On the other hand in present we have the smartphones which are becoming a
computer, GPS, radio, and actually our lifeline to the Internet. And to still be able to fit our pockets.
With the help of nanotechnology, mobile phones will be further evolved in terms of their
performance, and features. And would include for example, augmented reality, flexible screens, in
built projector, seamless voice control, three-dimensional screens and holograms, and of course it
might include also remote medical diagnosis features and many, many more features.
Nanotechnology in one sense is the natural continuation of the evolution that we have witnessed
over the last decade. Where millionth of a meter electronics, which we call usually micro
electronics, became commonplace. Thus enabling the construction of higher quality of materials
and devices and many more applications on equivalent or even smaller areas than we have knew
previously. So far, the miniaturization ability of the microelectronics allow the integration or
placement of thousands of chips into an equivalent area. Further miniaturization with the help of
nanotechnology would allow putting millions of currently available electronic devices over an area
that is less that few millimeters over few millimeters. In a constituent example, a team from the
Technion Israel Institute of Technology leveraged the power of nanotechnology to engrave all the
content of the Old Testament on a piece of silicon that is less than one millimeter by one millimeter,
as could be seen by the image in the bottom right of the screen. One of the parameters that is
directly connected with the miniaturization and nano technology is termed surface to volume ratio.

This parameter is of fundamental importance in the applications involving chemical catalysis and
nucleation of physical processes. Usually, surface area to volume ratio increases with a decrease in
characteristic dimensions of the material, and vice versa. Therefore as the material size decreases,
a greater portion of the atoms are found on the surface compared to those found in the bulk or
inside the same material. As growth and catalytic chemical reaction occurs at the surfaces,
therefore a given mass of nanomaterial will be much more reactive than the same mass of material
made up of larger particles. It is also found that materials which are inert in their bulk from form a
reactive when produced in their nanoscale form. And therefore they can improve their properties.
To demonstrate the relationship between the miniaturization of the materials and the surface to
volume ratio, let's consider a cube made of a silicon with a characteristic size of ten nanometers. In
this case, the number of the unit cells in this nanocube is estimated by 6,250, which is actually
equivalent to to fif, to 50,000 atoms. On the other hand, the number of the unit cells that are
located on each face is 340, thus resulting in 680 atoms on each face of the nanocube, and 4,080
atoms on all faces of the nanocube. Dividing the number of the atoms available on the surface of
the nanocube, namely 4080 atoms, by the number of the atoms available in all parts of the
nanocube, which is basically 50,000 atoms, brings to the conclusion that around 10% of the atoms
in the nanocube are located on the surface. On the other hand if we applied a similar consideration
with a piece of silicon of ten square centimeters and the thickness of one micrometer. This leads to
the conclusion that only 0.03% of the silicon atoms in this structure are available on the surface.
Therefore, nanomaterials have a much greater surface area per unit volume compared with the
larger particles. Actually this leads to nanoparticles that are more chemically reactive. This is so
because the molecules at the surface of the material don't have full allocation of covalent bonds
and are in energetically unstable states. Since many more molecules are located on the surface are
in energetically unstable states, nanomaterials are more reactive compared to the microscale or to
the macroscale materials. With the higher reactivity almost all types of nanomaterials are capable
of catalyzing reactions and free nanomaterials tend to agglomerate into bigger particles. On to the
specific physical and chemical properties of the nanoparticles there are expect, expected to
interact with substances such as proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids that present in
food, biological, or during desalination processes. Other applications of such feature include drug
delivery, clothing insulation, and many, many more. With this, we come now to the end of class
number one, session number one. Thank you.

1.2

Welcome to class number 1, session number 2. A nanostructure is an object that have at least one
dimension in the range of 1 to 100 nanometers. In describing nanostructures, it is needed to
differentiate between the number of dimensions on the, on the nanoscale. Nanoclusters are
structures that are 1 to 100 nanometer in each spacial dimension. These structures are categorized
as zero dimensional nanostructures. Nanocubes and nanowires have a characteristic diameter
between 1 and 100 nanometers. And the length that could be much greater than that. These
structures are categorized as one-dimensional nanostructures. Nanocomposite surfaces or thin
films have a thickness between 1 and 100 nanometers, while the other two dimensions are much
greater. These structures are categorized as two-dimensional complex materials. Finally, bulk
materials with all dimensions above 100 nanometer, but that contain zero dimension or one

dimension, and or two-dimensional nanostructures are termed three-dimensional nanostructures.

We will describe each of these nanostructure in more details in the next sessions. We will start now
with defining a zero dimensional nanostructure, which include basically, the nanoparticles and the
quantum dots. Nanoparticles are defined as small objects that are sized between 1 and 100
nanometers, and that behave as a whole unit with respect to its transport properties. Nanoparticles
are size dependent. Namely, the properties of the materials change as their size approaches the
nano scale, and as the percentage of the atoms at the surface of the material becomes significant.
The interesting and the unexpected properties of the nanoparticles are therefore significantly due
to the large surface area of the material, which dominates the contributions by, made by the small
bulk of the material. For the sake of comparison, bulk materials, mainly particles larger than one
micrometer, contain insignificant percentage of atoms at the surface in relation to the number of
atoms in the bulk of the same material. And therefore they don't behave or exhibit size dependent
changes in their physical properties. Nano-particles often posses unexpected optical properties as
they are small enough to confine their electrons and produce quantum effects. Besides the pendant
color of the nano-particles was utilized though without any intention by artists as far as the 9th
Century for generating a glittering effects on the surface of spots or colors in stained glass. The
unique physical properties of the nanoparticles allow much higher absorption of solar radiation in
photodyetic cells that are composed of nanoparticles than in thin films of continuous sheets, even
that is composed from the same material. Other size dependent properties change include,
quantum confinement in semiconductor particles, surface plasma resonance in some metal
nanoparticles, and chemical reactivity that are utilized for image formation in photography field.
Now, from the zero dimensional nanostructures, we will move to one dimensional structures which
include among the rest nanowires, quantum wires, nanorods and nanotubes. A nanowire is a
nanostructure with a diameter of the order of nanometer. Alternatively, nanowires can be defined
as structures that are having a thickness or a diameter constraint to tens of nanometers or less,
and unconstrained length. These scales quantum mechanical effects are important, and therefore
they are coined the term quantum wires. Many different types of nanowires exist. These include of
course metallic nanowires, semi-conducting nanowires, and insulating nanowires. More details
about each of these nanowires could be seen on the slide, and we will explain about these in the
next lectures. On the other hand, molecular nanowires are composed of repeating molecular units.
Either organic, for example DNA, or inorganic material. New forms of nanowires include coaxial
super lattices nanowires, as seen in the bottom figure in this slide. Nanowires have two quantum
confined directions while still leaving one unconfined direction for electrical conduction. Basically,
this feature allows the nanowire to be used in applications where electrical induction is required.
And because of their unique density of electron states, nanowires in the limit of small diameters are
expected to exhibit significantly different optical, electrical and magnetic properties from their both
three-dimensional crystalline counterparts. We will move now, right now to the carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are a long whole structure with the walls formed by one atom thick sheet of
carbon, which we call usually in the scientific literature, graphene. These sheets are rolled at
specific and discreet chiral angles. And the combination of the rolling angle and the radius decides
the nanotube properties. Individual nanotubes naturally align themselves into ropes held together
by the so-called Van der Waals forces, or more specifically pi-stacking. Usually, the end of the
carbon nanotube end with half buckyball like carbon structure. Carbon nanotubes have unusual
properties which are valuable for the nanotechnology, electronics, opitcs and other fields of
materials science and technology. In particular, onto their extra ordinary thermal conductivity and
mechanical, and electrical properties, carbon nanotubes find applications as additives to various
structural materials. For instance, nanotubes form a tiny portion of the material in some of their

carbon fiber, baseball bats, gold clubs, or car parts. An inorganic nanotube is often composed of
metal oxides. Inorganic nanotubes show various advantages such as easy synthetic ax, access, and
high crystallinity, good uniformity and dispersion, predefined electrical conductivity, good adhesion
to a number of polymers, and high impact resistance. These materials are therefore promising
candidates as filters for polymer composites with ev-, eh, with enhanced thermal, mechanical and
electrical properties. Inorganic nanotubes are heavier than the carbonyltube, which was, have
explained in the last slide. And therefore they don't, have a strong sickness under tensile stress,
but they are particularly strong under compression, thus leading to potential applications in impact
resistant applications such as [INAUDIBLE] visits. Two representative examples of inorganic
nanotubes include, as could be seen on the slide, boron nitride nanotubes. This case, for example,
or this material, have a high resistance to oxidation suited for high temperature. It has also Young
modulus of 1.22 Terapascal. It's also behave as a secu, semiconducting material. And of course the
electronic properties of this material are predictable. And on the other hand, I would represent on
the same slide an example on the Silicon Carbon nanotubes, which have also high resistance to
oxidation and it's quite suitable for harsh environments, and can be functionalized with organic
modulars on their surfaces. With this we come now to the end of class number one, session number
two. Thank you.

1.3
Welcome to class number 1, session number 3. In this session, we will continue what we have
already started in session number two of class number one. Two-dimensional structures include
thin films, planar quantum well, and super lattices as could be seen on the screen. As a
representative example of thin film, please have a look on scanning tunneling microscope image of
a self assembled monomer of [UNKNOWN] on gold surface. As seen in the image, the individual
molecules closely packed into hexagonal array. Also, besides that, one can see clearly the features
of the assembly and the surface. Namely, one can see the main boundaries which are highlighted
with light blue strips on the figure. And one can see also goldbeckansie islands, which can be seen
as circular blue spots. In the lower image of the screen, you can see a transmission
electromicroscope image of a superlattice, where alternate layers of two different materials exist.
In this context, please note that the thickness of each layer is only two nanometer in thickness.
One of the major groups in two dimensional structures is thin film. Namely, two dimensional film
with a thickness that range between 1 to 100 nanometer. When films are very thin, their electronic
and optical properties deviate substantially from those of the bulk material. As the material is
miniaturized towards the nano scale, the confining dimension that surely decreases, but the
characteristics are no longer average by the bulk. The energy spectrum becomes in this case
discreet, and measured by quanta rather than continuous as in the bulk materials. The confinement
of the electrons that exist in these systems change their interaction with the electromagnetic
radiation significantly. Electrons are confined in the direction that is perpendicular to the substrate,
and thus affect the wave function as well as the density of the states. Similarly, phonons that are
confined in the direction that is perpendicular to the substrate affect therefore the thermal
property. All transport phenomena in the two dimensional structures are highly affected by the

fixed boundaries and interfaces that might exist in or at the vicinity of the thin film. More details
about all of these effects will be given in the next classes. Now, we will move to the threedimensional structure, which include bulk nanocrystalline, as well as nanocomposites.
Nanostructured bulk materials include several sub-categories, which are Mentioned in the
following. The first subcategory is a crystalline materials. In this category, the atoms molecules, or
ions, which make up a material are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern. In some cases, the
regular ordering can continue unbroken over a large scale. Such as in the example of diamonds
where each diamond is only single crystal. The second subcategory is called polycrystaline
materials. Salt objects that are large enough to see and to handle, are rarely composed of single
material. But instead are made of large number of singular crystals known as crystalites whose size
can very from a few nanometers to several meters. Such materials are called polycrystalline as
mentioned previously. Almost all common metals and many ceramics are fully crystalline in their
properties. The third subcategory of this material is called amorphous materials. This category,
which we call also nano-crystalline solid, is a solid that lacks the long range order characteristic of a
crystalline. Indeed, amorphous materials have some short range order at the atomic length scale
due to the nature of chemical bonding. Such solids include, amongst the rest, glass, plastic, and
gel. Now, we will move to the nano-composites. A nanocomposite is a multiphase solid material
where one of the phase has one, two, or three dimensions of less than 100 nanometer. In the
broadest sense, this definition is more usually taken to mean the solid combination of a belt matrix
and nanodimenstional phase differing in properties due to these similarities in structure and
chemistry. The mechanical electrical, thermal, optical, electrochemical catalytic properties of the
nanocomposite differ quite significantly from those of the component material. Size limits for these
effects have been proposed in the scientific literature and include amongst the rest the following.
Composites with less than five nano-meter, nano-materials are designated for catalytic activity.
Composites with less than 20 nanometer nanomaterials are designated for making hard magnetic
material. And composites with less than 50 nanometer nanomaterials are designated for refractive
index changes. And finally, a composite with less than 100 nanometer nanomaterials are
designated for achieving mechanical strengthened or restricting matrix dislocation movement.
Nanocomposites might include combinations of organic material and organic material. It also can
include a combination of organic and inorganic material. And finally, it can include a combination of
inorganic and inorganic materials. This large amount of reinforcement surface area means that a
relatively small amount of nanoscale reinforcement can have an observable effect on the
microscale properties of the composite. For example, adding carbon nanotubes improves the
electrical and thermal conductivity. Other kinds of nanoparticulates may result in enhanced optical
properties, dielectrical properties, heat resistance, or mechanical properties such as stiffness,
strength, and resistance to ware and damage. We will come now to the end of class number one
session number three. Thank you.
Question 3 ( 1.8 billon)
Question 7 ( 1-D)
Question 11 (increases)