Benefits Of Polymer Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is one of the prominent areas of current research in all the fields of science and Technology due to its wide applications. It has revolutionized the field of material science by creating the materials of unusual properties and wide range of applications. Nanotechnology is being used to generate nanocomposites by incorporating nanomaterials into polymers for property enhancement. Owing to the diversity of their properties polymers find applications in almost all aspects of life and hence are very useful to society. Their performance can be significantly improved by blending them with nanomaterials. In conventional polymer composites, the reinforcement is in the order of microns, but Polymer Nanocomposites

Several phenomena are more pronounced as the size of the system decreases to nanoscale. Quantum effects also come into play at the nano scale. When materials are reduced to the nanoscale they start behaving in a entirely different way, they exhibit amazing properties when compared to macro scale, leading to unique applications. For example, Insulators may behave like conductors or semiconductors, stable materials can turn into combustible (aluminum); opaque substances may become transparent (copper); insoluble materials may become soluble (gold). Gold, a chemically inert material at normal scales, can become chemical catalyst at nanoscales. The development of ceramic and polymer nanocomposites is very attractive multidisciplinary research area in material industry. Now a days, attempts have been made to design novel inorganic/organic materials with best combinations of inorganic elements and polymer matrices for suitable applications. Miniaturization is the word of the day which has set a new trend in the manufacture of ever smaller optical, mechanical, medical and electronic products and devices which is possible due to the

The particles with at least one dimension in the range of 1 to 100 nanometers are called nanoparticles. Nanoparticles have advantages of narrow particle size distribution, high surface area, homogeneous pure and improved properties. A reduction in the spatial dimension or confinement of particles in a particular direction in a particular direction leads to changes in physical properties of the system in that direction. The novel properties that differentiate the nanoparticles from bulk materials are developed at a critical length of 100nm. As the size of the particle reduces to nanometer range (1 nm= l0-9m) surface to volume ratio increases, this increase in surface to-volume ratio, in turn increases the number of atoms on the surface and makes the behaviour of atoms on the surface dominant over those in the interior of the particle. The material properties - physical, chemical, optical, thermal, mechanical, electronic and electrical depend on how their atoms and molecules interact each other and with the neighbouring atoms and molecules. These interactions in turn depend on quantity of the material. In bulk state most of the atoms are inside and interact only with their own kind. But at nanoscale, much higher percentage of atoms are exposed on the surface than in the bulk state. These exposed atoms are thus available to interact with