SAMIR IQBAL: Hello everyone.

My name is Dr. Samir Iqbal.

I'm an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas
at Arlington.
Today we'll be talking about nanotechnology.
What is nanotechnology and how does it affect us?
We have heard a lot about nanotechnology,
but many times we don't know what are the size, scale involved.
What is the progress that we have seen.
And what are some simple tools that are required to work at nanoscale.
So today our outline would be introduction,
some background on size and scale.
What is special about nanotechnology?
Why do we need small things?
And how do we things-- how do we see things at nanoscales?
If you see this image on the right, this is an image from 2001
with-- they made these figurines using some polymer material.
And if you look at this size that's given at the bottom,
this is two microns.
So whenever you see a figure, a picture that
shows things that are at microscale or nanoscale,
these scale bars tell you what is the reference length in that image.
So this was just something which I wanted to show.
And of course soon we will see what is a micron
and how does it relate to the things that we are used in our everyday life.
Let me ask you, what are all the small things that you know?
We are so used to thinking about atoms and we
know there are electrons that are revolving in the orbitals.
And then there are protons and neutrons within a nucleus.
So which is realistically the really small thing
and now we have been talking about subatomic particles also.
We know that when atoms come together they form molecules.
And if you have been listening to media we hear a lot about DNA testing
and where samples from one person are used
to find out if that person was at a crime scene, for example.
Or if that person has a relation to another person.
Then there are things which are called virus which cause disease.
But there are many more things that are at smaller scale.
If you think about what is the smallest thing
that we can look at without using any special equipment.
Your guess is right.
Human hair.
Human hair is probably the smallest thing that we can see with naked eye,
without using any microscope, or any kind of device or aid.
This figure is off a human hair that was taken by a professor from Harvard.
Our hair range in size from 50 to 100 micrometers.
Now again, I'm talking about micrometer and nanometer
and I haven't told you what are those size scales.
To understand these size scale, think about a human
and if you are familiar with this character,
this was in a-- in a movie many years ago.
But anyway, a person has a height which ranges from probably two yards,
should be about six feet or smaller and then our eyeballs
are at the size scale of probably a centimeter.
And within our eyes then there are smaller parts.
There is a small hole which we can see in our eyes.
If you take this 1,000 times smaller we go
into region which is called micron scale which is 10 [INAUDIBLE] minus 6.
So this is the scale we had many of our things,
our electronic devices has these things which tell them the direction.
For example, when you hold a cell phone up, upside, on its side,
your picture changes its orientation.
So that orientation changes because there
are things in your cellphone at microscale
which are called gyroscopes which gives it, give them directional aid.
So if you take another-- if you divide that size with another thousand
we get into nanoscale.
So nanoscale is where things have been there in life, in all living things
and things have been there forever doing specific functions at nanoscale.
DNA, virus, bacteria these are all examples of things which have been
making us operate the way we operate.
Now if you look at the conversion of the numbers
we know a meter is 39 inches, then we-- if you go above in dimensions
we have kilometers we don't use these numbers megameters and gigameters
but these are essentially what you can see.
These are one million times of one meter or one billion and so on.
But if you go down in size then when you have some-- a meter divided by thousand
we have millimeter.
And a million, meter divided by a million is a micrometer.
Similarly in the same way, if we divide something with a billion
we get into nanoscale.
So this gives us a simple feel of what is nanometer and what is micrometer.
Why are we interested in knowing about nanotechnology or things at nanoscale?
Let me give you an example.
We have so many human on the face of this earth.
If you get-- count the [? record ?] numbers they say we are 7.12 billion
at this point in time.
Now think about it, how many chips, how many transistors
have been on a computer chips.
If you think of a silicon wafer which is eight inch in diameter.
We have so many of these computer chips which are broken and put
into their own packaging.
How many devices or how many functional devices out there on one small chunk.
10 billion.
So this is a number that Intel has been using.
That they are cramming up so many devices on this one square part
and this is what is making our cell phones run,
our computers run, our electronics maybe that's a microwave
or it's a television sets.
All these things are using these devices.
So there is an industry behind which is pushing things to their smaller size.
So we can put many more of them on a given chip size.
Now why do want to put many more of them?
So we can do things faster.
We can do things with much less energy need.
So think about it, if we can make these chips with so many more
devices on that we can do processing of a big supercomputer on our cell phone.
Similarly if these devices are smaller they would consume less of energy
so maybe we can go on with one charge of our cell phone for many days.
So but this is the technology that is pushing things to the smaller scale.
But do we see these things in our everyday life?
This is an example, this from a good friend from Europe.
And this shows a typical day somewhere in Europe.
So people are just enjoying their afternoon
with the computer, cell phone, somebody's taking a picture.
What does it have to do with nanotechnology?
Where do we use nanotechnology?
If you think about it, there are so many places
there are so many things that are using nanotechnology in this given picture.
If you start with the cell phone, it has nano features in it, nano devices.
You could talk about the frame of the bike that has carbon fibers.
If you think about the hardness of the laptop
that has so many components which are at nano scale.
The display of that laptop has nanotechnology in it.
If you think about the cell phone it has integrated circuit data in it.
If you look at the camera that has nanotechnology in it.
If you think about the sun screen that we put on to protect our skin
that has titanium dioxide nano particulates in it.
If you think about implants that we have.
For example, artificial hips they have coatings of nanomaterials.
Pacemaker that make our heart stay on their-- in their rhythm.
There are so many applications that are clearly
visible which are using nanotechnology.
So it is, yes it is used in everyday life.
How do we see things at nanoscale?
We are used to of microscopes right.
So as the name implies, we with the microscope
we can see things at micro scale.
How do we see things at nano scale?
One way to do that is to touch a machine that
uses touch mechanism to look at features on a surface
is called atomic force microscope.
What it does is, it uses a very sharp needle
and that needle moves on the surface where
you want to see the features that are at nano scale.
And just like we can feel braille with our fingers
this sharp tip can look at the things that are on a surface.
And that translates into an image which gives us information at nano scale.
Another thing that we can do is project electron beam
on objects which are small.
And those electron beams can tell us about the features that are made.
This is an example of magnifying an image by one billion time.
So this has been made to be one billion time enlarged in its dimension.
So that shows us a feature which has fewer nanometers in its size.
So there are two types of electronic microscopes.
One is called a scanning electron microscope,
another one is transmission electron scope
But the bottom line is that if we use electrons to see features
which are so small in the size.
So I hope we have learned something about nanotechnology.
What are the sizes involved, what happens
when we go at smaller size scale, and what
are the things that are already in our everyday use that
are using nanotechnology.
How do we see small things?
How do we manipulate small things?
And why do we need small things?

If you'd like to learn more I had my contact, email, and my Facebook page
given at the front.
You can get connected with other students from around the world.
And students were already working on cutting edge technology
to learn more about these things and to get more skills or more background
about these things.
Thank you for your attention.