The biggest advancement in sustainability projects may arrive at a scale 50,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair.
A panel of three ASU professors discussed the growing impact of nanotechnology on industry and society Friday at the Arizona Science Center during the first event in ASU’s Science Café series, “Is Nanotechnology Good for Sustainability… or Not?”
Nanotechnology, which involves engineering objects at a molecular scale, provides a method of manufacturing more flexible and durable materials.
“Nanotechnology is not one industry,” said George Maracas, an electrical engineering professor and chief operating officer of the Solar Power Laboratory in ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. “Nano is pretty much everywhere, and it’s there to make better widgets [products].”
Maracas said how nanotechnology will change people’s lives needs to be considered.
The emergence of nanotechnology into society is making way for immediate effects in areas as diverse as materials, electronics, health care, robotics and renewable energy, Maracas said.
“Nanotechnology is out of the laboratory and into the marketplace,” he said.
Maracas said nanotechnology will yield new developments like flexible solar cells that can be sprayed onto a piece of glass as well as batteries, already available in certain power drills, whose small components allow for much faster, more efficient charging.
He said some companies are also marketing these batteries for use in hybrid vehicles.
“Electrical storage is a huge, huge problem in the world today,” Maracas said. “What we would like to do is store hundreds of times more energy in a battery than we do now.”
Patrick Phelan, an associate professor in ASU’s mechanical and aerospace engineering department and the School of Sustainability said nanotechnology would heighten efficiency in several markets.
Using nanotechnology, car engines can increase their heat-transfer efficiency by 1 percent, Phelan said, an increase that could save around 1.8 million gallons of gas in the United States every day.
Phelan mentioned funding given to the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009, more than any other federal agency.
“This tells you something about the importance of nanotechnology with respect to energy,” Phelan said. “That’s where the government is putting its money.”
Maracas agreed nanotechnology can help better the efficiency of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Arizona has 19,300 square miles that could be used to produce solar energy, Maracas said, which could allow the state to supply more than half of the energy the U.S. consumes.
Still, Braden Allenby, the Lincoln Professor of Engineering & Ethics, said nanotechnology’s future is murky.
Allenby, who is also director of ASU’s Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management, said nanotechnology would change the perception of technology.
Allenby said nanotechnology’s incorporation into manufacturing means rapid development in every industry. He said it renders the technology’s long-term effects unpredictable.
“It’s not just nanotechnology, but it is the five horsemen of technology that we’re looking at, and we do not have a clue what they will do to us,” Allenby said.
Allenby said although nanotechnology is currently being incorporated into sustainable projects, its role in sustainability’s future remains in as uncertain as in other industries.
A crucial part of fostering nanotechnology into society is a more sophisticated approach, Allenby said, working with other countries as it develops.
Allenby cautioned against underestimating nanotechnology’s future course.
“Nanotechnology after 2,500 years is the achievement of ultimate human mastery of the material domain,” Allenby said. “Now that’s pretty extraordinary.”
Reach the reporter at joseph.v.tuccillo@asu.edu.
