NANOTECHNOLOGY AND

NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY – BASIC CONCEPT

Amarnath Maitra
University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007
[email protected]

Special Lecture 8th and 9th June 2009,

Summer Camp on Nano
 WHAT IS NANOTECHNOLOGY ?

With Nanotechnology, the technology itself is

fundamental. It is an enabling technology
allowing us to do new things in almost every
conceivable technological discipline. It is a
general capability that impacts on many
scientific disciplines; it is multidisciplinary.
 WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT
NANOTECHNOLOGY ?
At the nanoscale different laws of physics come
into play, properties of the traditional materials
change, the behavior of the surface starts to
dominate over the behavior of the bulk phase.
While the bulk atoms are isotropically interacting
among themselves, the surface atoms have
anisotropic interaction with their neighbouring
atoms. This causes the manifestation of different
physical properties like electrical, mechanical,
optical, magnetic, thermal and other properties.
 Geometric Structures
It has been shown that small
particleshaving diameters of <5nm
may have different structures. For
example, it has been shown that 3-
5nm gold particles have an
icosahedral structure while the bulk
gold has FCC structure.
 Size dependent population density of surface atoms in materials
Size na No of Surface atoms No of Bulk atoms
% surface atoms
1.13 48 94 51.1
1.70 108 279 38.7
2.26 192 620 31.0
3.39 432 1962 22.0
8.48 2700 2.84x104 9.5
14.1 7500 1.29x105 5.8
28.3 3.0x104 1.02x106 2.9
56.5 1.2x105 8.06x106 1.5
 Surface atoms populations and
quantum confinement in
Nanoparticles
In a block of metal the bonding electrons are
highly delocalized and move freely (like fish in
water).
Suppose one or more dimension of the metal
becomes so small that it is couple of times larger
than the distance between the atoms. When this
thing happens, the delocalization is impeded and
the electron experience confinement. This is
called quantum confinement. Cont……..
 Cont……
• A metal plate of 10cm long, 10cm wide and 4nm
thick has electron confinement towards the
thickness of the plate. Such situation is called
quantum well.(like fish in shallow water)
• Suppose a metal has several cm length but the
breadth and thickness are in terms of nm. This
takes a shape of wire and the confinement is in two
dimensions. This is called quantum wire. (like a
monkey on a rope)
• If all the length, breadth and thickness are of nm
dimension, the electrons are confined in all
directions and the situation is called quantum dots.
(like a monkey on the tip of a pole)
Quantum well

QUANTUM WIRE

QUANTUM DOT
 Materials dominated by surface
atoms
Under these circumstances the physical
properties of the material, such as
mechanical properties, electrical properties,
optical properties, magnetic properties and
thermal properties, are different from those
of bulk materials.
Study of these properties of the materials
dominated by surface atoms (may be called
Nanomaterials) is the study of
Nanotechnology
IMPROVED PROPERTIES OF
NANOMETER PARTICLES
 Better Hardness
 Higher Ductility
 Reduced Melting Point
 Non linear Optical Behaviour
 Single Domain Magnetic Behaviour
 Size Dependent Quantization Effect
 Increased Band Gap
 Easy Phase Equilibria
 Faster Kinetics
 Size dependent hardness of Materials
• Nanoparticles are very hard. If a weight W is attached to the
end of a thin wire nailed to the roof of a room the wire will
stretch. The stress S on the wire is defined as the load or the
weight per unit cross sectional area A of the wire S=W/A The
strain e is defined as the amount of stretch ΔL of the wire per
unit length L i.e. e = ΔL/L , where L is the initial length of the
wire. The stress S is proportional to the strain e, S = E.e . The
proportionality constant is called young’s modulus and it is the
property of the given material. The larger the value of young’s
modulus, the less elastic the material. The value of E/Eo depends
on the grain size, where Eo is the young’s modulus of conventional
grain size. For iron, E/Eo is more or less constant till 20nm grain
size but beyond this size the value decreases rapidly. Strength is
not same as the stiffness. Carbon nanotubes have E ranging from
1.28 to 1.8 Terapascals while that of steel is 0.21 terapascals
which means that E of carbon nanotubes is 10 times that of steel.
This wouls imply that carbon nanotubes are very stiff and hard
to bend.
Tr = 232 – 782 { σsl / [15.8 (r – to)] - 1/r}
“Labors of the Months” (Norwich, England, ca. 1480).
(The ruby color is probably due to embedded
gold nanoparticles.)
 What is the origin of the color?
Answer: ``surface plasmons’’
• An SP is a natural oscillation of the electron gas inside
a gold nanosphere.
• If the sphere is small compared to a wavelength of
light, and the light has a frequency close to that of the
SP, then the SP will absorb energy.
• The frequency of the SP depends on the dielectric
function of the gold, and the shape of the nanoparticle.
For a spherical particle, the frequency is about 0.58 of
the bulk plasma frequency. Thus, although the bulk
plasma frequency is in the UV, the SP frequency is in
the visible (in fact, close to 520 nm)
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD
 Size dependent quatization effect

Bulk metal Large cluster nanoparticles

By gradual decreasing the size, a size is reached where the
surface of the particles are seperated by disatances which
are in the order of wave length of electrons. This is quantum
size effect
 Size dependent quatization effect

In order to determine the diameter of particles from UV-

Vis absorption peak, the following
Brus equation[5] was used:

ER=Eg+hπ ×(1/me+1/mh) / 2D −1.8e /εD,

where RE is the energies of excited state, RE =hc/λ, that
is to say, the particle size has great impact on the
wavelength of UV absorption maximal peak. With
respect to CdS, the value of the electron effective mass
(me ) is 0.19 electron masses; the value of the hole mass
(mh ) is 0.8; the value of dielectric constant (ε ) is 5.7 and
D is the particle size (2r). Finally, the parameter (E )
must be identified with the bulk band gap, 2.58 eV.
Size dependent Quantization effect
of Nanomaterials
• Colloidal semiconductor
(quantum dots) and metal
nanocrystals typically have a
size between ~ 1 and 10 nm and
lie in the transition regime
between the bulk solid and
molecules. They appear to be a
fascinating object for studying
basically novel properties of
matter, generally described by
the term "size quantization
effect". A famous demonstration
of the size-dependent properties
of semiconductor nanocrystals
is the continuous change of their
emission color.
INCREASED BAND GAP OF
NANO-SIZED MATERIALS
• The CdSe
nanocrystals of
different sizes exhibit
different colors. With
decreasing crystal
size the band gap of
the crystal increases
and the dot gives off
more energetic, or
bluer photons.
 SUPERPARAMAGNETISM
• A magnetic materials with grain sized single-domain
magnetic moments which has no hysteresis at any
temperature is said to be superparamagnetic.
• For magnetic nanoparticles the measured magnetic
moments is found to be less than the value for a perfect
parallel alignment of the moments in the cluster. The
atoms of the cluster vibrate and the vibrational energy
increases with temperature. These vibrations cause some
misalignment of the magnetic moments of the individual
atoms of the cluster so that the net magnetic moment of the
clusteris less than what it would be if all the atoms had
their moments aligned in the same direction. The
component of the magnetic moment of an individual
cluster will interact with an applied DC magnetic field and
is more likely to align parallel than antiparallel to the field.
The overall net moment will be lower at higher
temperature . In superparamagnetism the net magnetic
moment is inversely proportional to temperature.
 Hard Ferromagnetic Material
showing Hysteresis loop

Nanosized powder of Ni-Fe-Co alloy

shows no hysteresis-
Superparamagnetic particles