What is nanotechnology? | Print |

Nanotechnology is often used. A clarification becomes necessary.

Nanotechnology is not a specific technology and is not clearly defined. Nanotechnology represents a broad spectrum of different technologies with only the word nano in common. The word comes from "Nanos" and means in ancient Greek ,dwarf. This technology is characterized by being used in the materials, particles and structures with at least one dimension less than several hundred nanometres (nm). A nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre. In comparison, the diameter of a human hair is 50,000 nm, 1000 nm is a bacterium, virus and DNA atoms about 1 nm and 0.1 nm.

The characteristic of these very small structures often have very different properties as the same material in traditional sizes. In our case, use was made of amorphous silicon dioxide nano-structures. On these structures, organic groups are grafted which gives specific properties. The special approach in our product is that the solid matter is extremely hydrophobic, but with the addition of suitable water soluble products, the very fine particles (nano-structures) are stabilized, so they remain in suspension and no separation of the two phases occurs.

The obtained mixture remains stable for months while its properties remain unchanged. In particular, the solids remain evenly distributed in water, the typical characteristic of a suspension. This suspension is applied by spraying, painting, roll up ... on an absorbing medium. After evaporation of the water a very good adherent finely divided white powder remains on the surface. After evaporation of the water the remaining powder will have his original property: an extremely water-repellent layer remains.