pictos_nano_animations  pictos_nano_videos  pictos_nano_cartoons  pictos_nano_quiz
 animations  videos  cartoons  quiz

Behaviour

What is physical behavior at nanoscale?

At this level of division of matter, the laws of classical physics do not predict all the effects observed. For example, the probabilistic quantum laws explain the tunnel effect that is the founder of nanotechnologies. Below 50 or 100 nm, properties such as hardness, elasticity, permeability, inflammability, conductivity, or color can be significantly altered.

What is "tunnel effect"?

113_effet_tunnel_1

In classical physics, the ball dropped from point A cannot go higher than point B.

113_effet_tunnel_2

In quantum physics, the electron having reached point B can reach point C directly.

If you impose a sufficiently strong electric field on an electron, it is able to get out of the metal that contains it to cross the gap to another metal or conductive material. It crosses a barrier and falls on the other side like a ball over a wall. If you do not throw it hard enough, what happens? Unlike a ball, an electron is a kind of cloud, a part of this cloud may pass the wall while the other will bounce back.

Faced with a barrier, an electron has the ability to split into two, one part crosses the barrier, and the other does not. But such a state does not last because the two sides of the electron interact with the material in which they are: one of the two parts melts, while the other grows. The electron ends up on one side or on the other: the part remaining behind the wall has the possibility to be "teletransported" with the other. As if there were a tunnel in the wall through which it has gone, whereas it has gone nowhere!