The Top Ten Real Nanotech Products Of 2003
Roland Piquepaille writes "Despite all the hype surrounding nanotechnology, there are actually hundreds of real products available today. Forbes.com had the good idea to select ten nanotech products that you can purchase right now. It goes from high-performance ski wax to a breathable waterproof ski jacket, or from an OLED digital camera to performance sunglasses coated with nanofilm layers 150 nanometers thick. My two preferred products are a $250 tennis racket, with a 3-ball pack of nanotech tennis balls to go with it, at a cost of $4.49. And guess what, these tennis balls have already been approved by such organizations as the Davis Cup. As you can see, nanotechnology is becoming mainstream. Let's see what 2004 will bring us. This summary gives you more details about these two tennis products."
January 18th, 2004 at 10:17 AM
More nanohype
Ah Forbes has fallen into the pit of presenting nanoscale materials as nano*TECHNOLOGY* but they can't even get the definitions right. The NSF definition of nanotechnology is 1-100nm. The sunglasses cited have cotaings of 150nm and 20 microns. Nanotechnology not!
Ok, the Babolat tennis racket — lets see a side by side comparison of a tennis racket enhanced with the Nanoledge nanotubes (I'm under the impression that nanotubes are still sufficiently expensive that one could not put a large number of them into a tennis racket that sells for $250) and a tennis racket enhanced with fireplace soot and a tennis racket enhanced with particulate matter from power plants. I would be willing to give better than even odds that the differences would be minimal.
Now onto the tennis balls. An inner core 20 microns thick (again not in the nanotech realm) of clay polymer nanocomposites – each 1 nanometer thin. Lets see 1nm goes into 20 microns 20,000 times. So are they implying that they execute 20,000 individual chemical cycles to apply clay polymer layers to the inside of tennis balls??? That sounds rather doubtful to me. In addition clay molecules form layered structures bonded by hydrogen and ionic bonding (for a useful background on clays see a description of kaolinite or Introduction Clay Minerology). Hydrogen and ionic bonds are not a polymerization process in the traditional sense unless they have some novel chemistry that turns those into covalent bonds. My guess is that they simply coated the inside of the tennis balls with 20 micrometers of clay and are calling it nanotech.
So in at least several cases the Forbes comments are more nanohype than nanotech!
January 21st, 2004 at 8:13 PM
Re:clay polymer composite
The coating is a composite of an organic polymer and type of processed clay. The clay particles are plates ~ one nanometer thick and ~ one micron by ~ one micron wide. Now when you layer this composite on the inside of a tennis ball the clay particles stack up and form a more effective gas barrier.
February 1st, 2004 at 7:47 PM
Re:clay polymer composite
Ok, that is a reasonable explanation. And I will certainly acknowledge it is a technical advance — but is it nano*technology* or nanoscale materials science? If polymer layering of nanometer thick clay particles is real nanotechnology then everyone who has made beer or wine for the last 5000 years has been in the nanotech business as well (those enzymes that turn sugar into alcohol operate at the nanoscale after all).
Robert
August 24th, 2006 at 8:15 AM
I would like to know if you could tell me the dimensions of a montmorillinite molecule and if possible send a color picture of a model of one.
Thanks,
Fred Rumak