Clay nanoparticles Keep Beer Fresh
Clay nanoparticles allow Miller Brewing to bottle its beer in plastic containers. The tiny reinforcements keep oxygen out and hold carbon dioxide in, which prevents the brewed beverage from spoiling.
Fabric Coating Takes the Ouch Out of Speeding Bullets
When a heavy bullet slams into soft body armor, it can cause a lot of damage even without penetrating the fabric. If that armor is coated with Nanorepel, the force will spread out over a much wider area, in effect cushioning the blow. At the moment of impact, a thin layer of organic molecules on the surface of each fiber freezes up, locking the sturdy strands in place.
Gold Nanoparticles Make Genetic Tests User-Friendly
In the near future, doctors hope to be able to perform sophisticated blood tests with the push of a button. That revolution in medical diagnostics could be made possible by products like the Verigene system, which uses DNA-coated gold nanoparticles to identify telltale proteins and important genes. Last year, the FDA gave Nanosphere the go-ahead to sell a genetic test, based on the Verigene system, that lets physicians predict how well their patients will respond to the anticoagulant drug warfarin.
Semiconductor Nanoparticles Make Printing Solar Cells Affordable
Solar cells are expensive in part because they are hard to make. Most of them are produced in vacuum chambers that use tons of energy to deposit thin layers of semiconductor materials onto a flawless wafer. Nanosolar churns them out at a fraction of the cost by printing nanoparticles on spools of cheap metal foil.
