Catalyst Online

Well, the original idea for even STARTING this whole blogging thing was so i'd have somewhere to write about science. We'll see how well that goes, but for now here's the unabridged version of my nano standards story that I wrote for science reporting. Personally, i'm rather proud of the fact that I managed to make sense of it all!

A shorter, but web-ready version can be found at: www.carleton.ca/catalyst

Finding the smallest of standards

Standards govern most facets of your daily life, whether or not you’re aware of it.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has over 16, 500 international standards including:

• 567 applying to road vehicles
• 193 applying to fasteners
• One for “comprehensibility and comprehension of graphical symbols” (better known as, can men and women find the right bathroom based on the symbol on the door?)
• And one for wine tasting glasses. Yes, wine tasting.

Nanotechnology is also finding its way into our daily lives. It is now found in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, sporting goods and even socks, to name a few.

So it’s no wonder that the ISO is thinking small, and setting its sights on creating standards for the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology.

The move to create international standards for nanotech started four years ago, in 2005. Standardization is overseen by ISO technical committee number 229, which is then broken down into four working groups, one dealing with terminology and nomenclature, the second with measurement and characterization, the third with health, safety and environment and the fourth with material specifications.

The process involves not just the ISO, but individual countries that contribute their own research. Canada is one of these countries, acting as convener for the terminology and nomenclature working group and is involved with the others as well.

Jennifer Decker, chair of ISO working group two, works with dimensional metrology at the National Research Council’s Institute for National Measurement Standards. She says that the need to create standards arose when nanotechnology started to move from being a discovery science to a technology. The ability to measure and characterize objects will enable this change, she says.

“Nanotechnology is predicted to have a huge economic impact, so when we look at what we need to know to be able to use nano to have commercial benefit, the first thing is we need to be able to make things, so we need to be able to measure things well enough to make things.”


Standards: Good for the researcher, good for the consumer

Maria DeRosa, an assistant professor in the department of Chemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa has encountered the same issues that Decker describes.

“With nanomaterials there are no guidelines about what it is. What is a nanoparticle? What is it made of? What are the impurities and what is pure? There are no definitions for any of these things.”

DeRosa’s lab, affectionately nicknamed aptamertopia, focuses on building devices on the nanoscale, such as sensors and catalysts. She says one of the major problems with not having standards is, as the field of nanotech grows, it can be difficult to replicate another lab’s experiments because they may or may not be using comparable materials.

“In chemistry we know that the name is related to the structure, and the structure is related to the chemistry. In nano people are just naming things, and especially on the nanoscale, small differences are going to make a big difference in the properties,” says DeRosa.

She goes on to say that standards will also be useful when it comes to creating consumer goods. Ken Bosnick, principal investigator of applied nanomaterial technologies at the NRC’s National Institute for Nanotechnology agrees, saying that it’s not always the cutting-edge sciences that standards apply to, it’s also the practical applications.

“Now it’s at the point where you can produce large volumes of carbon nanotubes, people have studied their basic properties and we’re now looking at real applications of them such as making composite materials for car parts and so on,” he says.

“And now you’ve got the problem where you’ve got a lot of people who make carbon nanotubes and when they try to make a composite out of it they’re all getting different results because no one really knows what sample of carbon nanotubes they’re putting in, in the first place.”

DeRosa says the average consumer will witness a trickle-down effect of standardization. She says there will be a better awareness of what is in our current products, which will eventually lead to regulations.

“Maybe right now it’s totally fine, and no one notices that there’s nanosilver on our anti-microbial socks but maybe once they go though this process of standardizing and figuring out the properties and toxicity of something like nanosilver, then maybe they’re going to say ‘OK, we can’t allow this to be in our socks.’”


Not That Simple

But creating standards for nanomaterials is not as simple as whipping out a ruler, says Peter Hatto, chairman of ISO technical committee 229 and director of research for IonBond Ltd.

“You don’t take a ruler and measure a particle, you’ve got to use some sort of physical properties of that particle.”

Actual measurements of nanomaterials are achieved through a combination of methods, including imaging using electron microscopy to create a larger image of the object in question, thermogravimetric analysis to look at changes in weight based on changes in temperature and photoluminescence spectroscopy to help determine the electronic structure of the material.

“There isn’t just one technique that we can use to tell us everything about carbon nanotubes, for example. You measure it using a whole suite of techniques to find the information you need,” says Decker.

It is also a long process. Creating a technical specification is the work of about two years and requires the consensus of at least five of the ISO technical committee’s participating countries. A full international standard however, must go through all of the 160 member countries of ISO, whether or not they participated in the initial standard. This takes about three years.

And even then, nothing is for sure. Standards are subject to review every two to three years, depending on whether they are technical specifications or international standards.

“Standards just provide agreed ways of doing things, or naming things or describing things or specifying things and they’re not written in stone, they’re not the Ten Commandments,” says Hatto.


What’s coming down the (nano) tube?

Since the ISO started to consider nanotechnology in 2005, two standards have been published, including one for terminology of nano objects, which includes particles, fibers and plates. The next standard is due to come out within the next four or five months, and deals with terminology for carbon nano objects specifically.

Decker says the development of these standards is happening very rapidly. ISO technical committees normally meet once a year, but technical committee 229 for nanotechnologies is currently on an accelerated schedule and meets every six months. She says this is because nanotechnology is recognized as a technology in rapid development, but with a lack of documentary standards. In order to promote nanotech as a commercial technology, standards must be established.

Hatto says is all boils down to knowing what you’re getting.

“Nanomaterials are difficult to evaluate and there’s a need to have confidence in what you’re purchasing. No one buys steel without buying it against a specification. If you’re going to have extensive trade in these materials, you need specifications that you can rely upon. In any area of commerce, specifications give you confidence.”