Transcript: A-Z of Tech Episode 16: N is for Nanotechnology

Louise Taggart:

Hello and welcome to the latest episode in PwC’s A to Z of tech podcast series. I am one of your hosts, Louise Taggart. I am joined by my co-host Shreya today. In this episode, we are going to be exploring ‘N’ for nanotechnology.

Shreya Gopal:

Thank you, Louise. We have two really great guests today joining us. Katie King, who is in her final year for a PhD in nanotechnology at Cambridge. Katie is also a Tech She Can ambassador; and Tarik Moussa, who is joining us from PwC’s innovation and sustainability team. Thank you so much both of you for being with us today.

Louise:

Thank you for those intros, Shreya.

Katie, if we turn to you first of all, could you explain to our listeners, as well as myself, exactly what nontechnology is and what the term begins to encompass.

Katie King:

Yes of course, and lovely to be here with you both, Louise and Shreya.

Nanotechnology is an umbrella term for so many different areas of science. What we are really talking about here is technology that’s on the nanoscale, and nanoscale is basically on the scale of a billionth of a metre. We are talking really tiny here. That’s anything on the atomic or the molecular scale. What we are doing with nanotechnology is controlling matter on this atomic or molecular scale to actually make systems that we can use for a whole host of different applications. I know that sounds a bit vague, when I say it is used in different applications, but it is because its such a broad term. Within nanotechnology, we can have nanomedicine, nanoelectronics, nanomaterials, and then use in energy storage. It really is a huge term, but its very exciting science and I have to say I love it.

Shreya:

Thank you for that definition, Katie. Given that we can’t really see it with our naked eye. Where does your curiosity come from, how did you end up being involved in nanotechnology research?

Katie:

One of the things that I love about nanotechnology, is that when you start looking at materials on a really really tiny length scale, they start acting weird. You get different phenomena that start occurring when you have something on a such a small length scale. Nanotechnology is all about trying to use those weird behaviours and try and use it for your different applications. I am in an area, which is nanomedicine, and so that’s only one of the many areas of nanotechnology. But what I am really interested in, is the way that you can actually manipulate materials to try and deliver drugs to cancer cells, whilst avoiding healthy cells. It’s all about targeted delivery that you need control, you need control on a molecular level in order to be able to bring about that effect.

Shreya:

Thanks Katie, I think that’s quite exciting to hear. More generally speaking, are there some benefits of this type of technology then?

Katie:

Nanotechnology is hugely beneficial and because it is actually quite a new field of science relatively, so we haven’t actually reaped all of the benefits of it. But what I would say is, some of the big benefits of nanotechnology, is that we are basically making some tiny technologies that respond to the environment that they are in. If you have something in the body, it could respond to the different pH change inside the body, like the acidity levels inside your body, which means that it would release drugs in the right place at the right time. You can also have things that are sensitive to temperature or to pressure. You pick your trigger; you can then control materials that will bring about that application or do something when that trigger actually happens. It is really exciting to be able to make materials that respond to the environment that they are in. Because its all about how you can actually control these materials, as technology has increased to actually enable us to control and manipulate matter on these levels, we are going to start seeing more and more benefits coming into play. Doesn’t just have to be acidity, it could be temperature responsivity or pressure responsivity, but what it allows us to do is to build materials that then react to the environment, though I really think we are just scratching the surface at the moment.

Louise:

That sounds incredible to be honest. It’s something that I just have no concept of at all really. It’s really insightful to be hearing about the kind of work that you are doing. You’ve mentioned, obviously you are specialising and focusing on nanomedicine, could you tell us a little bit more in detail about what this type of research focusses on and the kinds of benefits and applications we are going to be seeing out of it?

Katie:

With nanomedicine, again lots of people work on various things in nanomedicine, and I can’t say too much information about exactly what I am working on, but in general terms what we are trying to do is to make these nanomaterials or nano delivery systems that are able to detect cancer cells from within the body, and say, this is the cancer cell, that’s a healthy cell, gets to the cancer cell and then can deliver the drug directly to the cancer cell to cause it to die.

By doing that, you actually really limit the amount of side effects that the patient will feel. Normally, with cancer treatment, you’ve created a really toxic drug, give the patient a really toxic drug, and it targets healthy cells as well as cancer cells, as no directed targeting that happens. Which can lead people to feel really unwell, because the healthy cells are also getting damaged, not just the cancer cells. By using nanomedicine and creating something can act on the target that cancer cells that you want to kill, you can minimise the side effects and minimise the amount of the toxic drugs that you are actually giving to the patient. That’s one way with targeted delivery.

Another thing that a lot of people work on is with detection of cancer. We can use nanotechnology to try and actually have early detection of different cancer types and not just means that you will be able if you can detect it sooner, you can treat it sooner, which gives a higher chance of survival. There are lots of different ways that nanomedicine is being used for cancer treatment.

Louise:

Honestly, it’s truly incredible hearing about the types of work that you are involved in, and almost mind blowing to be honest. That’s obviously a fairly niche application of this type of technology, nanotechnology. Are there any applications, either in nanomedicine or more broadly of nanotechnology that our listeners might be familiar with in their own day-to-day lives?

Katie:

Oh my gosh, definitely. One of the most common uses of nanotechnology that you wont even realise is nanotechnology is in sunscreen. Sunscreen contains titanium dioxide nanoparticle, so they are about a 100 nano-meters in size. What they do is they actually absorb the harmful UVB radiation from the sun. When you are on the beach and you are just slathering on your sunscreen, you are actually just putting loads of nanoparticles on your skin. If it weren’t for those nanoparticles, then we wouldn’t be protected from that radiation and we will just all get sunburnt. We have a lot to thank those nanoparticles for to be honest.

Another one, if any of you love bikes and cycling, then carbon nanotubes can often get put into bike frames to make them really strong for their weight, so this is another way. In formula one, nanotechnology gets used a lot for material science and also in high performance aircraft by controlling the atoms of the materials that are being used, you can make some really strong responsive materials. Even though I am in nanomedicine, talking about really small delivery systems, its actually just control of things on that level. You can have bulk materials that are made up of nanotechnologies, but I would say, sunscreen is probably the most common.

Louise:

I had no idea. I will definitely have much more respect for my everyday sunscreen in that case absolutely.

Shreya:

Fascinating, I didn’t think sunscreen was nanotechnology either, thank you Katie for that. Do you think then in the near future, nanotechnology will start to become a little bit more common place in healthcare specifically?

Katie:

I think so, when it comes to healthcare, there are so many different steps that you have to get through from proof of concept, research and development, to actually being used on patients. Really, it might take quite a few years before we start seeing them in a much more common way, but things are definitely going that way, because nanotechnology just holds so much promise for actually the things that you can use it for. Even if its not in nanomedicine, then nanotechnology and its use in green nanotechnology and sustainability side, that’s where we will start to see as well, so it’s very interesting time.

Shreya:

Thank you, Katie, that’s almost like a perfect segue way to Tarik. Tarik, if we turn to you, we introduced you as PwC’s innovation and sustainability team. Could you tell us a little bit more about what your work encompasses on a day-to-day basis and how you came to be involved with this work?

Tarik Moussa:

Thanks Shreya, great to be on. For me personally, I have always been really interested in technology and really excited about how you can use tech for good. To set the scene a little bit, I like to think my team’s work sits at the intersection of two really important trends. From one side, we’ve got technological disruption. We are in the midst of what’s being called the fourth industrial revolution. Tech, whether its AI, blockchain, or indeed nanotech, we are discussing today, is advancing at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen it advance before, and that’s significantly changing the shape of the economy.

One interesting fact is, if you look at the top 500 companies in the world right now, its forecasted that half of those are going to be replaced over the next decade with new companies, so massive change is going to happen in the coming decades.

In parallel, we’ve also got massive environmental and social disruption going on. Scientists are telling us that we need to halve greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade, or it will cause irreparable harm to our planet. On the social side we’ve seen, for quite a while, but definitely increasing over the last year or so, growing concern about human rights, anti-racism, and sexism.

In our team, we work with governments, we work with major taxpayers, with investors, all kinds of clients, to have them navigate that rapid change and steer the use of tech towards more positive outcomes. What we’ve seen from previous industrial revolution is, they have been good for the economy in many ways, but that’s often come at the cost of doing damage to our planet, and we need to make sure that this industrial revolution is different.

Shreya:

Thank you, Tarik for the introduction. It sounds like from your introductory speech there, there are several examples of nanotechnology that we should look forward to. Is there anything specific that you are seeing that has been of particular interest to you?

Tarik:

Definitely, there are quite a few examples. If we stick with environment for a moment. Society has gotten this task, which is to halve greenhouse emissions by 2030, and reach what we are calling net zero emissions by 2050. That’s one thing, that’s a monumental ask. I think that is the challenge of our time. There is going to need to be some large-scale restructuring of the economy to reach that. We are also going to need to find new and more efficient ways to do things. One of the things I’ve been quite interested in, is this idea of marginal gains. For those who haven’t heard of it before, this was something British Cycling were doing in the 2000s. The idea is not to worry about protecting one thing, but to focus on how you can progress lots and lots of things, so we can get just 1% improvement in 100 different areas, that does really add up. For British Cycling we saw that has led to massive success for the cycling team at successive Olympics.

In sustainability, has the opportunity to do something similar. If you look at solar energy, for example, solar is now the cheapest form of electricity in all of history. We don’t necessarily need massive transformation there, but what if we could eke out a few percentage points efficiency. Nanotech has a role to play there, and it has had a role in the past to get us to this point. If we can fiddle with materials in the molecular level, we can create technologies that reflect less and therefore absorb more sunlight and increasing the efficiency of solar panels. Nanotech is really driving efficiency against that.

That said, I do think we need to think about transformation and not just efficiency gains too. Another thing we can look at is cooling. Air conditioners account for about 7% of all emissions globally. If we could find some way to make that more efficient that would make a massive difference. This is a story I just found out this week. Did you know that thousands of years ago Persians were making ice in the middle of the desert? They didn’t have freezers and the temperature in the desert never went below freezing, so it is a bit of mystery to me how they were doing this. There is a really interesting physical phenomenon going on. What they would do is, they would pour water into shallow pools, and basically the water radiates heat out. The heat escapes into space, and the temperature in space is of course absolute zero, so the water would cool down. Of course, there is always the trick, and the trick is here that it only works at night. During the daytime, the sun is shining warming the water up and is not able to radiate enough heat out to reach freezing temperatures.

That was really interesting to me, that they were able to do this thousands of years ago, and while that’s really interesting, the question is what do you do with that knowledge. For thousands of years, the answer was not very much outside of the desert. But a cooling system that could work during the daytime using the same principle would be really interesting. What you really need for that is an object that absorbs almost no sunlight, but also is able to send out energy back to space, and that’s exactly what scientist have been able to do with nanotechnology. If you can fiddle around at a molecular level you can create this coating, and when you put on an object, doesn’t matter if you leave it outside in the blazing sun, when you pick it up it will be cold to touch. That’s really amazing. They have trialled this out. The technology already works. They are just trying to get it cheaper now so they can deploy it at scale.

Shreya:

Thank you, Tarik, those are definitely some thought provoking examples there.

Louise:

I have to say, I did not expect to be hearing about desert ice as well as sunscreen as part of this conversation. At that point, Katie, if we bring you back in, I will start with a question to yourself, how do you see nanotechnology evolving or impacting us as the general public in the next five years or so?

Katie:

Good question, one of the areas that is very interesting with nanotechnology, and this is going to sound a little bit leftfield, is in terms of data storage and how we store our data. At the moment, with data centres, they actually make a lot of heat, which requires a lot of cooling and a lot of air conditioning. Actually, something like 38% of the power the data centres use is just to keep the place cool. Just as Tarik was saying, with the air conditioning giving 7% of emissions, its big environmental impact. One place where nanotechnology is being used is to try and workout different ways of storing data and looking into actually using DNA to store digital data. When I first read about this, I was like this sounds like some sort of sci-fi thing, like how are storing books and pictures in DNA, it just doesn’t seem to compute, for want of a better word. Actually, this is happening, and in 2016 or 2018, a group in the States from Harvard actually managed to code a gif of a horse running into DNA and then were able to decode it and reproduce this image. I just take think that is incredible. The idea with this in terms of energy saving, is to, all that data that we want to keep, but we are not gong to really look at it again, it’s a bit like, your old work, or your university notes, nobody want to throw it away, but not really going to look at it again. What they are going to do, in terms of this sort of information on a global scale, is to turn that into DNA, just coding for this data, and then store that, because it stores at room temperature for thousands of years. Store it, and then if you need to get a tick, then you can read the DNA and get your data back. Its to try and actually save energy. That sounds pretty cool to me.

Louise:

It does, it certainly sounds like some crazy dystopian parallel universe.

Tarik if I put the same question to yourself, so from your perspective of sustainability, environment, and what kind of impact do you see nanotechnology having in the next five years or so.

Tarik:

In the UK, Boris Johnson, in the middle of November announced a 10-point plan for green recovery. One of the things he put forward was this idea of creating four carbon capture hubs across the UK. Part of that is to help stimulate the economy, but a big part of that is to help meet our climate goals. The independent advisors to the UK government had said that its impossible for us to reach our climate goals without carbon capture technology. There are lots of different types of carbon capture technology. Some of them use bacteria to convert carbon dioxide that’s released into the air into ethanol, but there is also nanotechnology that’s being used for that. You can use tiny nanotubes to filter out carbon as its emitted, and what could you do with that. Imagine, you’ve got a steel mill out there and steel mill is making, say, airplanes. Coming out of that factory is going to be carbon dioxide, of course, burning fuels, where there are different processes going on in there, they are all releasing carbon dioxide.

If you are capturing that CO2, you could store it, you could put in a barrel, put it underground. That would be a win, you are taking CO2 out of the air; or if you could turn back all of that carbon into fuel, and then use that fuel to pull the plane itself, so you are not just reducing emissions there, but you are going into a full circular economy. There is a big climate ask at the moment and over the next five years there is a big opportunity for emerging technologies like nanotech to help us meet our climate goals.

Louise:

Following up on that then, do you see there being any hurdles or specific challenges to this type of nanotechnology coming to fruition?

Tarik:

The big challenge is, getting these solutions to scale and getting them to scale quickly. We got to half emissions by 2030 as I said, and the technology businesses and governments are going to be using to get us to that target need to be ready now. In the same way, we are going to need to get to net zero by 2050 and we need to think, in terms of business cycles, we need to have one or two business cycles ready in advance. We need to think ahead what is that basket of technologies that are going to be there for companies to invest in, when are they going to be ready. We actually did some analysis on this recently, looking at the early stage investment into what we are calling climate tech.

Our reports had some quite detailed stats on that. The interesting thing we found was just how fast this sector was growing. Everyone knows AI is really cool, and exciting, and a fast-growing thing; climate tech is actually growing three times as fast as AI, be it from a smaller start. We are seeing lots of interest from investors and corporates already. The big challenges will be getting these technologies out of the lab in time. That means getting enough funding, getting enough government support early on. So, whether you are working in R&D or academia, you are getting support to develop and test these ideas, so that they are ready for commercialisation.

The second challenge is, helping users of these technologies to find out about them. There is so much going on. I have learnt so much just on this podcast already. Things are moving so fast. Its great to see investors and corporates are already actively thinking about this thing. There is a big ask to make sure that we are all sharing this knowledge and the understanding that how technology like nanotechnology is shared in terms of how you can address climate change.

Louise:

Katie, does that resonate with you then do you think, some of the challenges that Tarik mentioned there about that transition from the lab or from academia, both of which we are obviously involved in, to broader applications. Does that resonate with you?

Katie:

Completely, its some really good points from Tarik. Because, when you are first researching things in nanotechnology, things are expensive, and you need the funding, and you need to be able to have that injection of money to be able to actually do the work and actually see if these technologies are going to work, and then once you have your proof of concept, its all about then trying to do it more efficiently and try and get the technology available for less money.

One of the big hurdles is actually trying to convince people to invest in that really early stage. Well it is risky, but once you’ve got through that point, you can bring the cost of things all the way down. In terms of green nanotech and climate technology, the initial cost will be quite expensive, but the gains at the end of it is priceless, if we can make these differences.

I would completely agree with that and think that, go in for the early stage, because the rewards that we could get from it later on will be fantastic.

Louise:

Absolutely, it certainly sounds so from some of the examples that both of you have provided today about how this type of nanotechnology can be applied in such a wide variety of ways, the majority of which I had no idea existed.

Based on these conversations, if our listeners wanted to do a bit more reading or a bit more research around nanotechnology, do you have any sources that you might want to recommend that they look into and might find useful. Katie, I will start with yourself.

Katie:

If you want to get involved with some of the nitty gritty of the nanotech and are interested in actually how it works, then Nature Nanotech is a great place, but it can be a little bit hard going sometimes. There are some good websites that I actually found really interesting, they are just going to give you the headlines of actually where nanotech is going, so there is one called popularscience.com. Just typing things into Google, to be honest, you get so much information, but I would really recommend, there is anything that we’ve spoken about, you think that sounds cool, really look it up, because I promise it is just as cool as it sounds and you will feel great learning more about it. If you are anything like me, you will enjoy it. So, I would say that.

I sometimes post some things on social media, so I do have Twitter, which is just, @KKing_5 and some science posts on Instagram which is @kt.science. If you are interested in any of that, then I can give you a little bit of a nanotech fix.

Shreya:

Thank you, Katie, and Tarik, any recommendations from yourself.

Tarik:

To emphasise Katie’s point, I often just Google some of these things and end up falling into a rabbit hole. There is so much information out there if you really want to get into the nitty gritty. If you want to go a level up, then I might give a plug for our own website. If you go on to the innovation website on the PwC site, we have a lot of reports on there about different applications of technology for good including nanotechnology, also more broadly artificial intelligence, blockchain and so on.

We’ve just put our report back in September on climate tech, as I mentioned earlier, the state of climate tech, 2020. If you search that, that has a lot of information on venture capital investment in climate tech over the past seven years. There are lots of interesting stats there on trends and investment, what the interesting thing here is for investors, what the growing areas are, and so on. I would definitely recommend just searching these things though and seeing what’s out there. There are lots of examples I didn’t get around talking about today, but things like precision agriculture using nanotechnology in agriculture to apply fertilise more efficiently and manage crops more effectively. Nanotechnology and data centres,  nanotechnology and satellites, there is lots of really interesting examples out there, so definitely get on the internet and search this.

Shreya:

Tarik and Katie thank you so much for those examples. Louise, shall we review what we have learned from our two wonderful guests this afternoon, from nanomaterials to digital DNA, there has definitely been a lot of discussion. I almost feel like, my comic life is becoming reality, right from aviation materials to net zero emission gains, and the whole thought about how nanomaterials can absorb emissions from the air and convert it into fuel for air travel. There are definitely many interesting instances and examples in our real world these days.

Louise:

Absolutely, and some of the medical applications, that Katie referred to are absolutely mindboggling and really heartening actually to know that this type of cutting-edge research is happening. Hopefully, our listeners enjoyed the discussion today as much as we have and thank you both so much to both Katie and Tarik for joining us as part of this discussion.

Of course, to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode of the A to Z of tech podcast. I hope you will be subscribing to make sure that you don’t miss out on the next episode, which will be O for OSINT.