These last years, nanotechnology has known a great evolution in its design and application area. Thereby, they are now unavoidable everywhere, from industrial applications to everyday life. This new development is called “Nano- revolution"

 

Nanotechnology has known a very quick expansion in the world market. As semiconductors are around a hundred years old between the discovery of their characteristics and their field of application in industry, nanotechnology has only fifty years of existence and already a vast area of application in industry and everyday life.

 

First of all, "nanotechnology" concept was discussed at first by Richard Feynman, in 1959, on December 29th in his statement to the American Academy of Science. He said: “There is plenty of room at the bottom". It means that the physics principles, does not preclude the ability to manipulate things atom by atom. Nanotechnology is a technology at the nanoscale that uses nanoparticles (a billionth of meters).

 

These nanoparticles may be from different families: metal oxide, silver powder, fullerenes (molecule composed of carbon that can take different geometric shape), carbon nanotube ... They are named nanoparticle when one of their dimensions: that is to say, height, width or length, is between 1 and 100 nanometers.

 

At the nanoscale, conversely the macroscopic scale, gravitational interaction is very weak against the electromagnetic interaction. This requires a different approach to quantified physics also called "quantum physics ". Quantum physics’ laws have made a break with classical physics approach and all physical theories and principles accepted in the 19th century.

 

Nanoparticles are often created by evaporation. They are recovered from the evaporation vapor containing the metal nanoparticles. There are also other methods such as laser pyrolysis, or other combustion techniques. Nanotechnology has multiple industrial applications in the aerospace, automotive or electronics but also in cosmetics, food or medicine.

 

Nanotechnologies, a real progress ?

 

Our document presents four areas where nanotechnology is becoming more and more: textiles, cosmetics, informatics technology and medicine. In each part, we will explain the characteristics and specificities of each application. We will discuss their benefits and risks as they are known today.