As humans continue to strip-mine the world's resources, the need for more energy-efficient technologies continues to grow. Many scientists are turning away from industry in efforts to mimic the tried-and-true methods of nature. Their quest is known as biomimicry and has the potential to power our lifestyles without destroying our waters, allow us to synthesize materials without chemical waste and let us store our data on smaller and smaller devices through nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology, in brief, is the application of activities at the atomic and molecular levels to real-world challenges, according to the Institute of Nanotechnology. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, 10 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. The field is concerned with the engineering of tiny electrochemical systems for diverse applications. Medical applications include gene therapy and drug delivery systems built on tiny implants. In the fields of chemistry, biochemistry and molecular genetics, molecular structures are synthesized in test tubes and genetically modified organisms that live in our own bodies.
One example of biomimicry is a set of researchers in Japan who are digging in soot to find replacements for our computer parts. Multiwalled carbon nanotubes are formed naturally from the carbon in soot into tiny tubes often smaller than 1 nanometer in diameter, or 1/80,000 of the diameter of a human hair. The tips of the tubes can write more than 250 gigabytes - that's 53 DVDs worth - of binary data onto a heated polymer film in each square inch. The tips use even less energy than their silicon counterparts used in personal computers, making the processing of data more efficient.
Nanomachines may also be made from metal ions by replacing some of the bases on DNA to form tiny metal structures. Researchers in Japan made metal structures in solution at room temperature, a key to efficiency in material creation and an echo of nature's own processes.
Nanotubes and nanowires, formed inside a tobacco virus, can also be used to carry electricity and light. The skeletons of the deep-sea sponge Euplectella researched in part by Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs also use nanotubes. The skeletons are triple-layered, tougher than optical fibers and are capable of trapping light more precisely than our current telecommunications fibers.
Spider silk is five times tougher than steel, but single-walled nanotubes mixed in solution can be made four times tougher than silk - 17 times tougher than the Kevlar in bullet-proof vests.
Materials scientists looking in the natural world for strong materials to replace brittle ceramics have found a mollusk with an abalone shell. The shell is formed primarily of calcium carbonate - common chalk - in a matrix of protein. The protein provides a template for the chalk to crystallize and form one of the strongest flexible materials known to man.
Students at the new Biodesign Institute at ASU may take on this sort of research and discover a way to coax bacteria to manufacture these proteins that assemble strong crystalline structures for personal protective gear, cars and, for parents and inebriated college students, unbreakable glassware.
Students may also follow the lead of researchers at the University of California at San Diego and create a new type of "smart dust" to fight disease.
The researchers have coated tiny, mirrored crystals with special substances so that they align in a liquid with one side facing out and another in. If antibodies can be attached to one of these sides, certain types of cells could be recognized within the human body and pollutants found in the environment, aiding in diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
A new scientific revolution ushered in by nanotechnology will bring us closer to our biological and environmental foundations. It will allow us to heal the damage we have done to ourselves and our environment through ignorance and disregard for our greatest teacher of all, the natural world. In this way, may we mimic the wisdom of millions of years of biological trial and error and not destroy what Mother Nature, the holder of infinite patents, has entrusted to our shaky young hands.
Audra baker probably is dusting the soot from her chimney and fighting those guerilla spiders that were going to be the subject of her biology thesis. Send offers of ransom to her arachnid captors at audra.baker@asu.edu.
