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Nanotechnology in Fabrics

How can nanotechnology improve fabric?
Making composite fabric with nano-sized particles or fibers allows improvement of fabric properties without a significant increase in weight, thickness, or stiffness as might have been the case with previously-used techniques. For example incorporating nano-whiskers into fabric used to make pants produces a lightweight water and stain repellent material.

Fabric: Current Nanotechnology Applications
Nanowhiskers that cause water to bead up, making the fabric water and stain resistant.
Silver nanoparticles in fabric that kills bacteria making clothing odor- resistant.
Nanopores providing superior insulation for shoe inserts in cold weather.
Nanoparticles that provide a "lotus plant" effect for fabric used awnings and other material left out in the weather, causing dirt to rinse off in the rain.

Introduction to Nanotechnology for Electronics

Nanotechnology has already reached the electronics industry with features in microprocessors now less than 100 nanometres (nm) in size (Intel’s Prescott processor uses 90 nm size features). Smaller sizes allow faster processing times and also more processing power to be packed into a given area. However, these advances are really only a continuation of existing microelectronics, and will reach their limit sometime around the end of the next decade (2018 or so) when it will be both physically impossible to “write” or “etch” smaller features in silicon, and also because at extremely small sizes (less than 20 nm) silicon becomes electrically “leaky” causing short circuits.

Nanoelectronics on the otherhand offer a new approach for the electronics industry in the form of new circuit materials, processors, information storage and even ways of transferring information such as optoelectronics.

MP3 Players
The advancement of technologies has helped increasing the size of memory. Now we can have tens of gigabytes of space in a very small storage device. The MP3 players we use today use either a flash memory or a mini hard disk for storing data. Flash memory is a large non-volatile storage device like an EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) based on the common CMOS manufacturing technique. This storage technology is rapidly replacing its magnetic predecessor by rising in capacity while diminishing the dimensions of its transistors.

Cooling Systems

The cooling equipment like refrigerators and air conditioning have also been benefited by the nanotechnology revolutions. Silver has been used for antimicrobial purposes in several products. It has helped check the growth of microbes and ensure a healthy and hygienic environment. Now silver is also used in filters for washing machines.

Hard Disks
The hard disks have been able to store such gigantic amount of data due to the use of Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) effect. It is a quantum mechanical effect. The use of this technology enabled to store well above 100 gigabits per square inch. In current hard disks, the magnetic domains are oriented in-plane, while those of the next generation will stand upright. For reading densely stored data, more sensitive and efficient read-and-write heads are required. It can be achieved through the even more sophisticated Tunneling Magneto Resistance (TMR) effect.

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