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- EDD K. USMAN | Twitter: @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 | Facebook: SDN — SciTech and Digital News
MINDANAO STATE UNIVERSITY-NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental, Dec. 5, 2023 (SDN) — The Innovation Council of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) continued its initiative to bring today’s emerging technology to higher education institutions (HEIs).
This time the recipient HEI of the DOST’s Philippine Council on Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development’s (PCIEERD) technology-focused initiative is the Mindanao State University (MSU)-Naawan in this Northern Mindanao province, about an hour and a half plane ride from Manila.
PCIEERD, headed by Executive Director Dr. Enrico “Eric” C. Paringit caused the establishment of a nano-focused project dubbed “nano-CORE Lab: Computational Nanotechnology Laboratory” at MSU-Naawan.
Costing around Php5 million, DOST-PCIEERD and MSU-Naawan under the leadership of Chancellor Dr. Elnor C. Roa launched and opened for business the state-of-the-art new laboratory on Monday, November 4. Its unveiling, along with the turnover of a project on Milkfish Nursery coincided with MSU-Naawan’s celebration of its Golden Anniversary (5oth Founding Year). The Misamis Oriental provincial government made the Milkfish Nursery project possible.
Both the DOST and the university are hopeful students would be attracted to the nanoCORE Lab to try their hands and learn about nanotechnology is a buzz word in the innovation world. Project leader for the Lab’s establishment is Dr. Rey Y. Capangpangan.
A briefer from PCIEERD laid down the project’s objectives, such as:
- Provide support to existing, ongoing, and planned (research in the pipeline) research projects on the applications of nanotechnology through computational simulation.
- Create a research hub for students and faculty researchers to generate ideas and transform those ideas into tangible products with commercial value.
- Capacitate, mentor, and train students in the field of nanotechnology and the application of computational techniques in solving specific problems.
- Provide training and consulting services to clients and other stakeholders about nanomaterial fabrication, characterization, and applications.
- Establish linkages to different industries, research institutions, NGOs, and other potential partners for research and product development endeavors.
PCIEERD and MSU-Naawan have in their sights as the nanoCORE Lab’s targeted beneficiaries covering students, educators, researchers and nanomaterial fabricators.
So, what is “nanotechnology”, its importance, uses, and are examples of nanomaterials?
For this, we have to rely on old reliable know-all (well, not quite almost), Google! A search led the website of National Geographic(NG).
NG defines nanotechnology as “the study and manipulation of individual atoms and molecules”.
It further explains, thus:
“Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of materials on the molecular, atomic, or even subatomic scale.”
But to the ordinary readers, the laymen, the people on the streets, the term is still a labyrinthine puzzle. Not everyone has the mind of an engineer, a scientist.
Suffice to say that, according to NG, nanotechnology deals with “the understanding and control of matter” at the scale of “nanometer” (represented as nm), which is “an extremely small unit of length…a billionth (10–9) of a meter.”
NG explained further that when something is on the scale of nanometer, that something or material has shown to “unusual properties”. Like when a particle’s size is changed, that particle’s color changes as well.
“That’s because in nanometer-scale particles, the arrangement of atoms reflects light differently. Gold can appear dark red or purple, while silver can be appear yellowish or amber-colored,” NG points out.
If you still don’t get it, like this moron pretending as science journalist, perhaps a better way is to learn about nanotechnology’s applications and why it’s important in making people’s lives a bit easy, convenient.
By increasing a material’s surface harnessing nanotechnology, more atoms is allowed to interact with other materials.
“An increased surface area is one of the chief reasons nanometer-scale materials can be stronger, more durable, and more conductive than their larger-scale (called bulk) counterparts,” NG emphasizes.
“Nanotechnology is not simply working at ever smaller dimensions, Rather, working at the nanoscale enables scientists to utilize the unique physical, chemical, mechanical, and optical properties of materials that naturally occur at that scale,” the United States-based National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) points out.
And why do scientists wrack their brains studying the properties of nanomaterials? They pour their brains out learning about “these properties for a range of uses, from altering consumer products such as clothes to revolutionizing medicine and tackling environmental issues.”
United States physicist Richard Feyman is credited as the “father of nanotechnology” for his talk in 1959 called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” While he did not use then the term “nanotechnology”, he described in his talk “a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules.”
NG pointed out that modern nanotechnology had its roots in 1981 following the invention of the “scanning tunneling microscope” allowing “scientists and engineers to see and manipulate individual atoms.” International Business Machine (IBM) scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer were awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the scanning tunneling microscope.
Builtin.com, recalls Iron Man, the billionaire superhero that Hollywood superstar Robert Downey, Jr. played in the movies.
“It’s nano tech — you like it,” Downey says in Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity Wars”.
It’s fiction, Iron Man’s exoskeleton armor formed through a metallic liquid covering his body.
But it just shows nanotechnology has many applications in everyday life.
You may not know it, but there are many examples of consumer products with nanotechnology, among them, via Builtin.com, such as:
- Sunscreen
- Clothing
- Furniture
- Adhesives
- Car paint
- Sports equipment
- Computers
- Medicine
- Food
- Fireproofing
So, the next time you hear about nanotechnology, just think that you are already benefiting from nanomaterials. (/)