BIOAPPLICATIONS AND MARKETS FOR INORGANIC NANOPARTICLES

摘要

In recent years, the biotechnology community has discovered that the distinctive physical characteristics and novel properties of inorganic nanoparticles ―their extraordinarily high surface area-to-volume ratio, tunable optical emission, superparamagnetic behavior, and others ― can be exploited for uses ranging from disease diagnosis to sun protection. Key to many of these existing and emerging bioapplications is the comparable size scale of nanocrystals and biological materials, such as antibodies and proteins. The extent of commercialization of these various nano/bioapplications was investigated in a technical-market study published recently by Business Communications Co. Major findings from the report, RGB-201B Opportunities in Nanostructured Materials: Biomedical, Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Applications, are presented in this paper. Generally speaking, materials that have structural features ranging in size from about 0.000000001 (1 x 10~(-9)) meter to 0.0000001 (100 x 10~(-9)) meter ― that is, 1 to 100 nanometers (nm) - can be referred to as nanostructured. This nanostructuring may exist in one, two, or three dimensions. For example, a thin film of only 10 nrn in thickness is nanostructured in one dimension; a whisker or fiber of 25 nm in diameter and 1 micron in length is nanostructured in two dimensions; and a roughly spherical crystal or grain of 30 nm in diameter is nanostructured in three dimensions. It is this latter type of inorganic material ― three-dimensionally nanostructured materials, or nanoparticulate materials ― that is the primary focus of this paper.