Nanotechnology for energy and environment

Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. While nanomaterials have been a part of our everyday life for quite some time, the past two decades have witnessed a fast growth of the nanotechnology sector. Nanotechnology is being used in several applications to improve the environment and to produce more efficient and cost-effective energy, such as generating less pollution during the manufacture of materials, producing solar cells that generate electricity at a competitive cost, cleaning up organic chemicals polluting groundwater, and cleaning volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from air.