European Soccer Championship 2012: The Nano ball is round, too

It all kicks off again in June: The European soccer championship in Poland and Ukraine. The size of a soccer ball is often used to illustrate the dimension of nanotechnology: Compared to a soccer ball, a nanometer is as small as a soccer ball is compared to the earth. But the world of nanotechnology actually has soccer balls of its own.

These “buckyballs” are C60 fullerenes, molecules made up of 60 carbon atoms, arranged in exactly the same way as the edges of a soccer ball stitched together from pentagonal and hexagonal leather patches. For instance, a nanometer is the size of a molecular soccer ball with which the right player can produce great tricks.

Ball wizards in the laboratory

Just like the highly paid soccer stars in the top European teams with the ball, scientists can work wonders with the buckyballs. The results are as surprising as it would be if the Ukrainian team was to win Euro 2012:

Because they can easily bind with free electrons, buckyballs can be used to trap free radicals. These are particularly reactive molecules in human cells that make the skin age more quickly, for example. This is why fullerenes are already being used in a defensive role to trap free radicals via an anti-aging cream.

A study by a French research group at the University of Paris, published in the journal “Biomaterials”, drew much attention recently. The toxicity of the soccer molecules was tested on rats. For the first time, the C60 fullerene was systematically administered to the animals on a lifelong basis. Instead of being harmed by this, the rats lived twice as long as a control group. The effect was attributed to a decrease in age-related oxidative stress. If this finding were to be confirmed in further tests, the nanoparticles could go on to become a key agent in the fight against aging not only of the skin, but of the body as a whole.

The buckyballs can be mixed in with polymers (plastics) as a material for organic solar cells. For instance, researchers have identified the carbon nano soccer balls as a suitable component for producing transparent solar cells in conjunction with specific semiconducting plastics. Under UV irradiation, the polymers give off electrons that are absorbed by the fullerenes and passed on to the circuit.

Talented rising stars

Other application areas where experiments are being performed with buckyballs are use as a lubricant, superconductivity, production of diamonds and use as a hydrogen storage medium. However, the commercial application of buckyballs has been limited so far, as the manufacturing costs are prohibitively high.

In soccer terms, the buckyballs, named for architect Richard Buckminster Fuller because of his spherical buildings, can therefore be regarded as a rising star on the verge of breaking into the big time.

Soccer fields for nano soccer balls

Soccer fields on the same scale as the buckyballs have already been built. In response to an appeal by the German magazine “Der Spiegel” at the time of the 2006 Soccer World Cup, researchers sent in soccer fields measuring around 500 nanometers from one goal line to the other. These tiny soccer fields are 200 million times smaller than a normal soccer field. The researchers drew the lines using ion beam lithography or carved them into the substrate with the atom-fine tip of an atomic force microscope. However, no games were played on these fields.

Even so, real miniature soccer was played in Nano Soccer 2008 in Pittsburgh at the RoboCup US Open. In this case, though, the “nano” refers to the weight of the robot players, not their dimensions: they were actually allowed to be up to 300 micrometers in size. The nano robots played on a microchip, with energy and information being supplied via electrodes. The human coaches used a microscope to monitor their players.

Despite appearances, the dribbling micro robots are not the result of scientists with too much time on their hands having a little fun. Rather, they are a step towards active, maneuverable microsystems which might one day swim through our bloodstreams for medical applications or help to automate the production of microscopically small technical components.

Shooting for the nano goal

To date, only Professor Wolfgang Heckl, Director General of the Deutsches Museum Munich and a member of Nanostart’s Supervisory Board, has a perfect record in nano soccer. With the fine tip of a scanning probe microscope, he kicked a buckyball over a distance of two nanometers from one hexagonal “goal” of a supramolecular structure to the next. This means that he has effectively scored one goal from one shot. The results were published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry back in 2004.

“The truth is on the field”

From outstanding performances at the micro and nano level to action in the stadium: Nanotechnology certainly plays a key role when it comes to scoreboards in the stadiums, modern advertising panels with moving displays, and screens for public broadcasting in big cities throughout Europe. All of this is based on LED technology, which follows nanotechnology principles and delivers sharp reproduction that is also clearly visible in daylight.

Soccer ball, soccer shoes and jerseys have long been high-tech products. The first fully synthetic soccer ball was used at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. The “Tango” soccer ball, to be used at Euro 2012, is also a high-tech product, although nanotechnology in the narrow sense was not actually used in its development. 

Therefore, nanotechnology also provides the essential conditions for making the European Championships a live experience at public showings outside the stadium. Whether huge crowds will gather to watch big games on the “nano” screens is now down to Joachim Löw’s boys on the German team.

Fonte: NanoStart