What are Nanoplastics?
Nanoplastics are plastics that have nanoscale additives to give the material additional properties. These properties vary depending on the application, but nanoscale additives can make plastics lighter yet stronger, more heat-resistant, more UV-resistant, antimicrobial, more conductive, or add any number of other properties. Nanoplastics is an infant industry with many exciting theoretical products on the horizon including intelligent and self-repairing plastics. Nanoplastics is just one industry under the much larger umbrella of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology creates biochemical machinery on the nanoscale level. A nanometer (nano for short) is one billionth of a meter, so nanotechnology deals with molecular or atomic processes. At this level of life, proteins and other chemicals interact to form bonds and carry out processes. Nanotechnology harnesses those natural processes through direct manipulation to create unique configurations that can have profound effects on the macro scale. N
