Abstract
Every one has heard about nanomaterials and their outstanding possible applications, such as "space elevators", but what are their actual capabilities and real life applications? If your technical challenges are related to scratch resistance improvement, mechanical strength increase, fireproof material, easy to clean surfaces, conductivity, UV protection and many more others, nanomaterials can provide you with innovative solutions.
The nanoscale is part of every day nature's activity, such as DNA encoding
human livings or visual effect of nacre. Even human activity has been
integrating nanoscale features for years, without even knowing it, as pigments
in Maya blue paints or carbon black in tires.
Among the different sciences that are gathered under the term
"Nanotechnologies", nanomaterials are the basic building blocks and represent,
along with the equipment market, the main current business in the nano field.
Nanomaterials are composed of nanoobjects, meaning objects that have at least
one dimension in the range of 100 nm or smaller.
A wide range of nano-objects is currently commercially available or in
development: nanoparticles, nanoclays, nanotubes, fullerenes, quantum dots,
dendrimers, nanocapsules... The report contains a classification and
description of these different nano-objects, as well as a list of applications
per nano-objects.