I was in a conversation the other day with a large organization and one of the leaders said: “What happened to Nanotechnology? I don’t really hear about it anymore.” I immediately came back to a comparison to software development in the 80s. If you remember back that far, there was all this excitement about object oriented development. I remember going to a large organization in the UK right around 2000 and the CIO said “What ever happened to Object Oriented techniques? I don’t really hear about it anymore.” I went on to explain to him that we don’t talk about it anymore because “it’s just in there.”
Granted nanotechnology is not quite that ubiquitous, but it is getting closer all the time. I talked with him about some of the current work in the sensing space within HP labs that is using nanotechnology.
The area where it is becoming common is in the materials space. That was brought home to me again this morning by this Solve for X video about “low power wireless everywhere” spray on antennas. If you’ve not seen it and are into radio and related areas, it is quite interesting and appears to be generating some buzz.
The innovation uses nano-materials as part of a commercial product. Work has been going on in this area for a while but this appears to be the first spray on antenna you can buy. I believe the ham nation podcast will be doing some experimentation with it at some point in the near future.
These nanomaterials are cropping up in products everywhere, to the point that it is no longer marketed as “nano” directly.
