'Nanotech' is probably the most fashionable (by that I mean overused) word in technical product design right now. I reckon it's just about replaced 'bio-friendly' haha
Nanotech is certainly very powerful. My dad is a manages the engineering for a (war)shipbuilding company, he tells me they've been using nanotech for the past couple of years to paint the hulls of the boats. One side of the paint is hyper adhesive, so it doesn't scratch easily and maintenance is cheaper. The outside of the paint is hydrophobic, reducing water resistance and improving the speed and fuel efficiency of the boats (it's a little more complicated).
Something else that probably needs explaining is 'nanotech' is somewhat of a misnomer. We're talking about designer molecules that, in terms of molecules, are actually bloody massive. Way bigger than any organic molecule (monomer).
When DPS say that they're using nanotech in their skis, what I think they mean is they're using composites with non-linear stress characteristics. This is definitely possible, and very very cool (I'm a chemist and I get excited by things like this). I literally know fuck all about ski building, or mechanical stress etc, so my examples may not be spot on. Say you want a soft ski, but you don't want it to flex too far. You can insert nano particles into the composite that makes it resist stress at a certain point, as shown in my sketch. Blue represents a normal linear composite, note it isn't actually linear; purple is a possible composite using nanotech.
But I guess you already knew that, but you just didn't understand how it was possible. Now I know fuck all about carbon fibre/ fibreglass/ any material you may use as a composite other than rubber. I'll explain how this is possible in terms of polymer science.
First a very simple overview of a concept that anyone who's done high school chemistry should be familiar with - entropy. In short, entropy is the level of disorder. The universe tends from an ordered to a disordered state. We can quantify entropy in chemistry, but here I won't bother. All you need to understand is that a situation where something has higher entropy is favoured to a lower entropy. It's probably best to think of entropy as the number of possible arrangements - squeeze all you're pens into a small pencil case and they can't move around (low entropy), drop them onto the floor and they could go anywhere/ there are many different possible arrangements (high entropy).
I trust most of you already know what polymers are. I want to explain, but it's really really difficult to do in text and a paragraph. Anyway, one main element that defines the characteristics of a polymer is the side chains. Take amino acids for example - the side chains there drastically affect the properties of the proteins they form. What's important is how the side chains interact with other side chains - tertiary butyl is massive and inert, it prevents other monomers from coming close. Alcohols can form hydrogen bonds, and could cause hydrophilicity. Sulphides (like cysteine) can form sulphide links with other sulphides, giving cross-links between two potentially different chains. A nano-particle could interact with these in a manner that can be not only controlled, but designed.
Polymers get their elastic properties from the entropic advantage of the mass of chains being tangled - there are more ways you can arrange the chains when they are tangled. When you stretch a rubber band, you are pulling the chains lengthways, reducing the number of possible arrangements. Cross links also restrict the number of possible arrangements, reducing the entropic advantage of the chains contracting. This reduces the elasticity, also increasing the resistance to stress.
How does nanotech cause non-linear stress characteristics? Imagine you designed a molecule that would form hydrogen bonds with hydroxy groups from the chain, but you made it so the chain would have to be pulled out straight before the hydrogen bonds could form. As you stretched the polymer, the amount of linking between the chains and the nano-particle would increase, increasing the molecules resistance to stress.
That's pretty much as much as I know, and it's on the absolute upper limit of what I know as well. It confuses me. I'm a dreadful writer as well, apologies. The whole point of that was to explain how a composite with a non-linear response to stress could: A. be possible; and B. be made.
