Iran Unveils 7 New Nanotechnology Projects, Equipments

Iran unveiled 7 new industrial projects and equipments in the field of nanotechnology in a ceremony attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Saturday.

Production of enhanced power plants’ filters with nano fiber technology, nano silica powder with applications in rubber and paint industries, antibacterial polyamide yarns and pilot-production of nano-membrane filtration used to purify polluted water are among the plans inaugurated by President Ahmadinejad.

He also unveiled nanotechnology equipments, including spectroscopy system for flight duration and differential thermal analysis instrument.

Iran has taken wide strides in nanotechnology in recent years. Iran stood 12th in the 2011 world ranking of nanotechnology scientific production with a total number of 2,998 journal publications.

Iran also ranked 18th in world during 2000-2011 in the field with a total number of 8,146 published scientific articles. Iran’s h-index value, as an efficient indicator for measuring the scientific quality, jumped up to 19 in 2010.

Last October, the country also unveiled its (then) latest achievements in the field of nanotechnology in a ceremony in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

These indigenized technologies included BET analyzer, Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DIRE), Capillary Electrophoresis instrument (capable of both qualitative and quantitative analyses for drug products), HiReSPECT instrument with potential for small animal 3D high resolution imaging.

The laboratory BET analyzer can afford characterization data for catalysts, nanocatalysts, adsorbents, membranes (nano porous structures), nanofibers, nanotubes, and thin films.

The Capillary Electrophoresis instrument (CEP 1000) features short analysis time, high efficiency and minimum sample intakes. The apparatus covers a wide spectrum of chemicals in areas like food, biology, environment and nanotechnology.

The DIRE device can form micro and nanometric vertically or horizontally aligned structures. It has potential applications which includes, but not limited to, purification of materials such as Si, Si3N4, and SiO2; synthesis of nanowires and nanopores as in optical detectors; gas and force nanosensors; synthesis of AFM cantilever; fabrication of micro pressure gauges; micrometric gyroscopes. The choice of appropriate gases has omitted the need for usage of polymers as well as offering the possibility for production of unique structures.

Small animal imaging is a new branch of imaging which effectively contributes to drug development and cancer research. HiReSPECT is the instrument which enables 2D-imaging from every 360 angels of a mouse that has been injected with a desired radioisotope. A computer software package processes the data from HiReSPECT and creates 3D visualizations to help better investigation of drug propagation inside the animal’s body.