Behind the buzz and beyond the hype: Our Nanowerk-exclusive
feature articles Posted: Jul 17th, 2007 Nanobionics - where the
boundaries between electronics and biology become fuzzy
(Nanowerk Spotlight) In case you are not old enough to remember
the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man during the 1970s, the
show was about an astronaut, Steve Austin, who got severely
injured during a crash and became a guinea pig for bionics
experiments by the CIA. In an operation that cost six million
dollars, his right arm, both legs and the left eye are replaced
by bionic (cybernetic) implants that vastly enhanced his
strength, speed and vision. Never mind Hollywood, though, but
bionics - a word formed from biology and electronics - has
become a serious research field. In particular the development
of artificial muscles is progressing rapidly. Nature’s solution
to producing fast contracting muscles is to use nanotechnology.
The challenge for scientists is to mimic the intricacy of
natural muscle in their artificial-muscle sys