"Nano" rules in the Baluarte

March 2006

Yesterday the III National Nanotechnology Congress was inaugurated, with around 250 scientists attending

The prefix nano has taken over the Baluarte. From yesterday to Thursday around 250 experts will discuss nanomagnets, nanotubes, nanoparticles, nanosensors… It is the world of the smallest, and is perhaps the most dynamic sector of science at present, one of which further results are expected: industrial, medical and chemical applications… It can also be used to develop the quantum super-computer, to develop an excellent insulation material or a precise carrier of medicines. The profitability expected of nano technology in the long term is attracting companies and governments. Indeed, when he inaugurated the III National Congress of Nanotechnology yesterday, the President of Navarre, Miguel Sanz, referred to his project of creating a company in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to drive research in nanotechnology.

In the world of the smallest the properties of materials change. “They behave in a different way”, says Juan José Sáenz, a Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a member of the Executive Committee of the congress. “It is a case of using these new properties to develop a multitude of things, to improve those that we already know and also to find others that we would never have thought existed”. Sáenz stated that is a branch of science that has raised a high level of expectations, "which might be fulfilled within ten years”. Among these, according to the professor, are elements such as minimum size sensors, “similar to electronic nostrils”, nanomagnetism or the storage of energy in devices that occupy little more space than an atom.

Everything the experts are talking about in the Baluarte is very small. The prefix nano comes from 'nanometer', which is not more than a measure: the millionth part of a millimetre. To get an idea, a human hair is between 0.05 and 0.08 millimetres thick. These scientists work on a scale that is not usually higher than a micron, i.e. a millimetre divided by one thousand. In these sizes the colour, strength or electrical conductivity of materials are different. Once these are known, they can be taken advantage of. An example: one of the best-known nanoproducts is nanotubes of carbon; they were discovered in 1991 and are 10,000 times smaller than a hair. Because they are so tiny they can be used as connectors in the smallest devices. They are, moreover, much more resistant than steel, and are so elastic that they can be bent at 'impossible' angles without breaking or deforming, and they have an incredible capacity to transmit heat without melting. Their applications are many, as many as the imagination can produce, and the science, as varied as that of the experts who have come together in Pamplona.