• Question: What are nano-materials?

    Asked by mansurkhan to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 19 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Nanomaterials are tiny materials that exist at the nano-scale…. that’s one-billionth of a metre! They can be particles… made from gold for example, or built from small molecules, DNA and proteins. I’m building protein-based nanomaterials in my resaerch!

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      I’m making nanostructures too!

      They are very small, but compared to most molecules and drugs they are really big, so it’s big small stuff, quite confusing really.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Things that are smaller than micro, but bigger than pico 😉

      I work on protein nano-compartments in bacteria. These are less than 0.1 micrometer in diameter, so they are one-hundred-thousandth of a metre in size.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Yep, nano-materials are materials on the nano-scale, which means nanometers. The comparison you often see is small things compared to the “width of a human hair”. A nanometer is about one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair!
      My supervisor works on something called graphene – a really strong material which is one atom thick. That’s about one tenth of a nanometer. It’s a pretty amazing material – people think it will one-day be used to make super thin, super tough, super flexible touch screens!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Everyone else has it covered except one crucial bit – donn’t confuse them with “nanna materials” which your granny/nan is made of.

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