Nanomaterials: Look at the Earth

Abstract

AbstractNanotechnology promises to be the greatest technological breakthrough in history, doing for our control of matter what computers did for our control of information. The origins of nanoscience can be traced to clay mineralogy and crystallography when it was discovered that clay minerals were crystalline and of micrometer size. The unit cell dimensions of clay minerals are in nanometer scale in all three axes (x, y, and z). The advantages of clays are: (i) their ordered arrangements, (ii) their large adsorption capacity, (iii) their shielding against sunlight (ultraviolet radiation), (iv) their ability to concentrate organic chemicals, and (v) their ability to serve as polymerization templates. Clay minerals in nanoforms played a catalytic role in the synthesis of the ribosome in RNA that led to genesis of life on Earth. The history of Earth suggests that the late Precambrian oxygenation led to the inception of a ‘clay mineral factory’ that triggered the radical evolutionary diversification of Neoproterozoic life due to enhanced burial of organic carbon. High activity clays protected organic matter from reoxygenation, allowing a corresponding quantity of O2 to accumulate in the environment. The inseparable association of clays with lifeforms makes them most desirable in manufacturing nanoparticles. Clays have been extensively used in industry, but as concern for environmental sustainability grows, clay minerals find new takers from all conceivable forms of industries. Nanotechnology literature is flooded with clay-polymers for their possible use in high strength material manufacturing, for ecological life support systems, removal of contaminants from water and wastes, and as catalysts in chemical reactions to reduce energy consumption.