INFOMERCIAL SCRIPT (NANOTECHNOLOGY)

Yang: The world is shrinking; there's a deep and relatively unexplored world beyond what the human
eye can see. The microscopic world is truly alien and truly fascinating. Let’s go and delve further
than the microscopic scale.

Nads: Together we’re going to explore the potentials of working at a nanoscopic level – working at a
level a billion times smaller than the average scale we work at today. This is nanotechnology.

Dom: Nanotechnology means any technology on a nanoscale that has applications in the real world.
Nanotechnology is the science of building small, and I mean really, really small. It's pretty difficult
to imagine how small a nanometer is, but let's just take a moment to try and wrap our heads around it.

Bea: The tip of a pen is around a million nanometers wide – nowhere near close. A single sheet of
paper is around 75,000 nanometers thick. Our human hair is around 50,000 nanometers thick. I ran
out of things to compare; let's just take a different approach.

Yang: In fact, on a comparative scale, if each person on Earth was the size of a nanometer, every
single person on the planet would fit into a single car – a Hot Wheels car. You get the idea – nano is
super, super tiny; we're talking subatomic. So that's how big, or rather small, a nanometer is.

Nads: But why does it matter? Why look at really small things? Well, they ultimately teach us about
the universe that we live in, and we can do really interesting things with them. When we move into
the nanoscale, we can work with new domains and physics that don't really apply at any other scale.

Dom: Nanoscience and nanotechnology can be used to reshape the world around us, literally.
Everything on Earth is made up of atoms – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and
houses we live in, our own bodies. Now, think for a moment about how a car works.

Bea: It's not only about having all the right parts; they also need to be in the right place for the car to
work properly. This seems obvious, right? Well, in pretty much the same way, how the different
atoms in something are arranged determines what pretty much anything around you does. With
nanotechnology, it's possible to manipulate and take advantage of this, much like arranging Lego
blocks to create a model building or airplane or spaceship. But there's a catch, and here's where
things start to get really interesting.

Yang: The properties of things also change when they're made smaller – phenomena based on
quantum effects. The strange and sometimes counterintuitive behavior of atoms and subatomic
particles occur naturally when matter is manipulated and organized at the nanoscale.

Nads: These so-called quantum effects dictate the behavior and properties of particles. So, we know
that the properties of materials are size-dependent when working at the nanoscale. This means that
scientists have the power to adjust and fine-tune material properties, and they've actually been able to
do this for some time now.

Dom: It's possible to change properties such as melting point, fluorescence, electrical conductivity,
magnetic permeability, and chemical reactivity, to just name a few. But where can we actually see
the results of this kind of work? Well, everywhere.
Bea: There are numerous commercial products already on the market that you and I use daily that
wouldn't exist in the same way without having been manipulated and modified using
nanotechnology. Some examples include clear nanoscale films on glasses and other surfaces to make
them water-resistant, scratch-resistant, or anti-reflective. Cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, and spacecraft
can be made out of increasingly lightweight materials.

Yang: We're shrinking the size of computer chips, in turn helping to enlarge memory capacity. We're
making our smartphones even smarter with features like nano generators to charge our phones while
we walk. We're enabling the delivery and release of drugs to an exact location within the body with
precise timing, making treatments more effective than ever before.

Nads; There's quite a list, and that's only a few of the potential applications. Let's delve into a few of
these in more detail. Nanotechnology has been pivotal in advancing computing and electronics,
leading to faster, smaller, smarter, and more portable systems and products. It is now considered
completely normal for a computer to be carried with one hand, while just 40 years ago, a computer –
infinitely slower – was the size of a room.

Dom: This has been made possible through the miniaturization of the world of microprocessors. For
example, transistors – the switches that enable all modern computing – have reduced drastically in
the briefest amount of time, from roughly 250 nanometers in size in the year 2000 to just a single
nanometer in 2016. This revolution in transistor size may soon enable the memory for an entire
computer to be stored in a single tiny chip.

Bea: Increasingly faster systems have also been made possible using nanoscale magnetic tunnel
junctions that can quickly and effectively save data during a system shutdown. It's expected that
using magnetic RAM or random access memory with these nanoscale junctions, computers will soon
be able to boot almost instantly.

Yang: Flexible, bendable, foldable, and stretchable electronics have been developed using
semiconductor nanomembranes – monocrystalline structures with thicknesses of less than a few
hundred nanometers. In normal terms, they're really small and super bendy. They're particularly
useful for applications in smartphones and wearable technology like smartwatches.

Nads: Nanotechnology is a definite answer to a digital world that is focused on becoming smaller and
more efficient. But it can also help us start to clean up some of the world's bigger and more pressing
problems. There are many applications for detecting and cleaning up environmental contaminants. It
is anticipated that nanotechnology could contribute significantly to environmental and climate
protection by saving raw materials, energy, and water and reducing greenhouse gases and hazardous
waste.

Dom: From increasing the durability of materials so that they last longer and reduce waste to the
creation of insulation materials that improve the efficiency of paper towels, allowing them to absorb
20 times their weight – nanotechnology really has the potential to do great things for the conservation
of our planet and the human race.

Bea: The availability of fresh, clean drinking water is an increasingly pressing issue that can be
linked back to population growth, urban mitigation, pollution, and the vast effects of events
associated with climate change. Nanotechnology holds the power and promise to not only detect
pollutants but to filtrate and purify. The magnetic interactions between ultra-small specks of dust can
remove arsenic – this is incredible given that it is naturally present at high levels in the groundwater
in a number of countries.

Yang: Similarly, the development of nanoparticles that can purify water pollutants, which cost less
than the process of pumping it out of the ground for treatment, also holds great promise. Basically,
getting clean water is a huge problem, and nanotechnology can help solve it. This all sounds almost
too good to be true. There have to be downsides to the seemingly endless potential of
nanotechnology for the environment.

Nads: Actually quantifying and confirming the effects of a product on the environment, both positive
and negative, is achieved by examining the entire life cycle – from production of the raw material to
disposal at the end of its life cycle. There is a genuine concern that nanotechnology will further
increase energy and environmental costs, given that the production of the nanomaterials themselves
takes a large amount of energy, water, and environmentally problematic chemicals such as solvents.

Dom: In order to produce things that will help the environment, we have to use things that will harm
the environment. Scientists are on the verge of new frontiers all the time; nanotechnology is an act of
exploration, and we're very much still in the early stages, but we're closer than you might think to this
actual goal.

Bea: The idea of subatomic disease-fighting machines has been in science fiction for decades, so this
idea is not really a new one, but we've definitely come a lot closer to making this idea a reality in the
past decade. It sounds like a near-perfect solution to many modern medical problems, but let's just
explore how and where science fiction meets fact and what challenges may lie ahead.

Yang: Nanotechnology is already heavily incorporated into medical tools, knowledge, and therapies
already widely in use. Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology in medicine; it's used for
disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Nanoparticles can encapsulate or otherwise help to
deliver medication directly to cancer cells and minimize the risk of damage to healthy tissue. This
could ultimately change the way cancer is currently treated and dramatically reduce the toxic effects
of chemotherapy.

Nads: Suffice to say, researchers are working on it. The increased capabilities of imaging and
diagnostic tools enabled by nanotechnology are also paving the way for increased success rates for
many different therapies.

Dom: Quantum dots are tiny semiconductor particles, just a few nanometers in size, sometimes
referred to as artificial atoms due to their ability to behave like naturally occurring atoms or
molecules. Because of those quantum phenomena I mentioned earlier, quantum dots have optical and
electric properties that differ from larger particles. As a result, they have many applications and are
widely used in various sectors. However, creating quantum dots is an extremely expensive process,
which generates a huge amount of waste, and we find ourselves revisiting those environmental
concerns.

Bea: Amazingly though, scientists have recently developed a low-cost method to make these
quantum dots using some chemicals and green leaf extracts – tea leaves. The procedure is
economical, and the by-products are non-toxic. The results are genuinely amazing, with heaps of
potential. The research proves that the quantum dots created with tea leaves can penetrate the skin
and reduce the growth of cancer cells by about 80 percent. So not a cure, but a huge leap forward in
progress that doesn't come with the environmental payoff.

Yang: It's not just how we face the big diseases that nanomedicine can transform; researchers are
now exploring ways to grow complex tissues with the goal of one day growing human organs for
transplant. Nanotechnology can also improve the way vaccines are delivered and how successful they
are, including vaccine delivery without the use of needles – still a work in progress though, an
amazing feat once achieved. But the emerging era in nanomedicine really is the era of the nanobot.

Nads: Nanorobots are tiny robotic packages that can complete tasks in an automated way. They hold
the ability to sense, respond, detect friend or foe within the body, and deliver payloads and cargo all
at the nanoscale. Why do we need them? Well, conventional water-soluble drugs are far from perfect
and present difficulties in treatment. However, diagnostic nanomachines allow doctors to monitor the
internal chemistry of the body's organs, providing direct access to diseased areas.

Dom: Nanobots can also be equipped with wireless transmitters so that doctors can change the
treatment method to respond specifically to the state of the medical condition. They also hold the
potential to completely replace pacemakers by treating the heart's cell directly.

Nads: Research regarding nanobots and medicine offers several opportunities, such as artificial
antibodies, artificial white and red blood cells, and antiviral nanobots. They are super durable and
could theoretically operate for years without any damage. Nanobots, in fact, hold the potential to
address many health problems besides cancer, such as unblocking blood vessels in hard-to-reach
areas, taking biopsies, or measuring the level of certain chemicals in otherwise inaccessible areas of
the body.

Dom: So we are much, much closer than you might have thought in the field of medical
nanorobotics, holds considerable promise for advancing medical progress. But the phrase "so close
yet so far" comes to mind because there are many challenges and roadblocks to face before surgical
nanobots will reach clinical trials.

Bea: Scientists have numerous challenges to overcome before the potential of nanobots and medicine
can truly be realized. Getting the bots to travel safely where we want them to in the body and actually
having them stay there long enough to carry out a procedure is incredibly difficult.

Yang: Scientists also have yet to work out how to keep the nanobots from being destroyed and
expelled from the body like any other toxic or foreign bodies. So while nanobots hold the key to an
infinitely less toxic solution to treating cancer, the challenges in getting the solution to the stage of
becoming a viable treatment are still a bit in the future. We're not quite there yet. However, if past
progress has anything to go by, I don't think we're so far off.