Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The extraordinary properties that make nanotechnology so important often also lead to
great difficulties in producing, separating, purifying, consolidating, handling, and mea-
suring nanomaterials. In addition, capturing and retaining nanoscale properties in the
final manufactured macroscale products also pose major obstacles to building products
from nanomaterials. Overcoming technical barriers to achieving cost-effective manufac-
ture of nanomaterials with unique properties and subsequently efficiently and effectively
capturing those properties in producing consumer end use products represent a number
of difficult tasks and can best be guided through researchers working with industrial
partners who can help guide the research efforts into the most economically viable path-
ways and relatively quickly determine if the proposed solution makes economic sense.
Nanomanufacturing technology development will require overcoming major barriers in
materials production and manufacturing and process control as well as predictive mod-
eling. For example, manufacturing products from nanomaterials is challenging because
it has been observed that nanopowders, -solids, and -suspensions have a high propen-
sity to agglomerate; have highly reactive surfaces; and have a fundamental tendency to
change properties with time, temperature, and handling conditions. Equally challenging
is that once nanomaterials are embedded into fibers, sheets, tubes, bars, or other forms,
there is limited technology to join these into useful forms without altering the properties
at the joint or interface. Additionally, when morphology is important to nano-enabled
product performance, it is difficult to obtain this quality throughout the module or body.
A listing of generic technical barriers includes the following (NSET 2007, Department
of Energy 2007):
•
being able to commercially and reproducibly manufacture uniform, high quality, con-
sistent nanomaterials in high volume;
•
difficulty in developing economically-viable and scalable unit operations and incorpo-
ration of nanomaterials into products make many nanomaterials prohibitively expen-
sive for many applications due to high capital costs and low production volumes;
•
difficulty or inability to retain nanomaterial functionality as the material is incorporated
into products;
•
difficulty in incorporating and controlling admixes of nanomaterials into other bulk
materials;
•
process-monitoring tools tailored for analyzing the unique characteristics and satisfy-
ing the process control needs of producing nanomaterials are lacking; for example,
real-time, in-line measurement techniques are needed;
•
predictive models of nanomaterials behavior are needed for correlations between nano-
materials properties and end-use performance as a cost-effective aid to design of
nanomanufacturing processes.
In developing the needed nanomanufacturing technologies, greater industrial influence
and awareness also serves to help guide research into the highest priority and most pro-
ductive areas. For example, production of nano-enable composites is an area that is a
high priority for a number of industry sectors in addition to the forest products industry.
Without developing the science and technology for nanomanufacturing and successfully
incorporating nanomaterials into macroscale products for consumers, nanotechnology
will be primarily a laboratory curiosity. We must be able to reliably, reproducibly, and
cost-effectively produce composite matrices of bulk materials and nanomaterials that
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