WONDERFUL APPLICATIONS OF NANO-MATERIALS TO REDUCE POLLUTION LEVELS ON THIS PLANET
Ever since our ancestors sharpened sticks and shaved flints around the campfire, humans have been tool makers. Today, engineers apply this maker's impulse to the realm of nanotechnology. Nano-engineers understand that bulk materials have defects and imperfections that weaken their overall structure. As we shrink objects to the nano- scale, the presence of defects is greatly reduced thus it makes nano- materials stronger than their large-scale counterparts. One of the most wonderful and interesting initiatives is to turn water into a sort of nano-tech battery to store solar energy. Nano-materials are also chemically more reactive than their macro-scale equivalents. That’s because catalytic chemical reactions occur when molecules meet surfaces in an energetic state with more surface area translates to more reactions. So breaking a bulk catalyst down into billions of nanoparticles provides a vastly greater active surface area. This is not merely a theoretical c