nano2006: Day I

Yesterday there was an indication and today it was a reality. The 8th international conference on nanostructured material started today with a bang! We anticipated the no. of people going to turn up will be quite large and it was evident from last night attendance in the mixture party, more than 450 delegates! The conference was inaugurated at 9 in the moring and J. N. Tata Auditorium was just packed. Many of the big guys talked about nano science and technology and theme of the in augural session was of course anticipation for a productive 5 days ahead. Prof Balram, Director of IISc emphasized more on interdisciplinary research and agreed that he really have tough time in bringing science and engineering department together. Although his last statement, which did not make me elated’ was that chemistry in the key for nanomaterials. Mr. Director its material science and physics, maths and bio is now equally important brothers. The first plenary lecture was delivered by the pioneer in nano research Prof. CNR Rao, Prof. Ranganathan introduced the only Dan David fellow in India. Prof Rao started his lecture by describing an oxide which behaves as a metal (ReO3) at nano stage. His talk was concentrated more on the nanotubes than any other properties, the innovative work was to form thin films at the liquid-liquid interface. This lecture set the tune of the conference, but still it was started with the chemical note. There is little doubt that Atul and Kamanio really had tough time making this big event a reality, the way our faculties slogged for last few months was really impressive. The sessions I followed and will be following is taking place in the J. N. Tata audi, and few talks I will attend in bio materials and few in the functional material sessions. I am not going to Satish Dhawan audi where the theme D talks are going on. CNR’s talk was followed by the talk by Ruslan Valiev in structural materials session. He talked about the SPD process, the interesting part of his talk was to describe the amorphous phase that formed in Ni during parallel channel ECAP, Vikram rightly added issue of grain size dependence on the amorphization. Prof. Amiya Mukherjee’s replaced Helena and gave a very stimulating talk. Highlight was the strength of Cu and the Si3N4 with toughness nearly 15??!! Rightly the work reached Nature. The talk on Biomaterials in the hall c in the afternoon session was also quite informative for people who are new to this field. Prof Yang stressed on the nano ceramics required for biomedical application. I missed the last talk by Ramu, he is in a new field and quite happening one: it was the SWNT doped nano composite for high mechanical strength application. Prof. Mukherjee’s talk gave us the information that the CNT fibers have strength of 1 TeraGPa!!! It appeared to me that this nano will be dominated by CNTs; last nano2004 surely paved the way for CNT technology for this one. There were tons of posters there; I was looking for few guys who did not turn up. like Takeli, anyway it had few very good works to go through. Whether it is Krisanu’s HREM or the scientist's work from TIFR, had shown that nano materials are in the heart of technology today. Let’s see what day 2 unfurls, by the way, Abi’s hall management gang or the guys in the registration were quite sharp today, but extra credit goes to the people taking care of transportation they are having a tough time, i hope situation changes tomorrow.