FRONTIERS IN NANOMATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY AND IMPACT ON SOCIETY

摘要

Throughout the human history, major changes in our civilization and quality of life have occurred as a result of discoveries of new materials. From Stone Age to Iron, to Bronze, to Semiconductors and Nanomaterials, materials have revolutionized and defined our civilization. Semiconductors ushered in the modern era of electronics and information age. Nanomaterials stand to revolutionize the modern era as we must do more with less and less to conserve and sustain our dwindling resources of critical materials. For every technology, there is a "materials bottleneck" and this aspect is amplified considerably for nanotechnology. This paper focuses primarily on the impact of nanomaterials and nanotechnology on the conservation of materials resources and the sustenance of welfare of the society. The special emphasis is on the discoveries of novel materials and processing, and the transition of nanomaterials to nanotechnology to manufacturing for the good of the society, specifically related to nanostructuring of materials for next-generation systems having superior performance. We start with a discussion of intrinsic advantages of nanoscale materials and systematic approach for transition into systems. As the feature (grain) size of solid-state materials decreases, the defect content reduces and below a critical size material can be defect-free. Since these critical sizes for most materials lie in 5-100nm, there is a fundamental advantage and an unprecedented opportunity to realize the property of a perfect material. Along with this opportunity, there is a major challenge with respect to large fraction of atoms at the interfaces, which must be engineered to realize the advantages of nanotechnology based systems. We specifically address nanosystems based upon nanodots and nanolayered materials synthesized by thin film deposition techniques, where recurring themes include nanostructuring of materials to improve performance; thin film epitaxy across the misfit scale for orientation controls; control of defects, interfaces and strains; and integration of nanoscale devices with (100) silicon based microelectronics and nanoelectronics. The systems of interest are based upon strong novel structural materials, nanomagnetics for information storage, nanostructured or Nano Pocket LEDs, variety of smart structures based upon vanadium oxide and novel perovskites integrated with Si(100), and nanotechnology based solutions to enhance fuel efficiency and reduce environmental pollution.