THE Industrial Technology Development Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (ITDI-DOST) recently announced the opening of its nanotechnology laboratory to the public on July 1.
“At the Itdi-DOST, our NanoLab is one of the youngest of units providing technical services to our local industries,” said Josefina R. Celorico, a supervising science research specialist at the Material Science Division (MSD) of Itdi.
“Now our Juan techies can personally appreciate the look and feel of new nano products,” she added.
Introduced in 2012 by Science Secretary Mario G. Montejo, the NanoLab is one of the very few public nanotechnology research laboratories in the country. It offers the public world-class equipment and devices meant to provide nanotechnology-related technical services. By developing materials with structure at the nanoscale, researchers can explore their unique optical, electronic or mechanical properties.
The NanoLab is currently housed at the MSD-Itdi building, where a high-resolution field-emission transmission electron microscope (FE-TEM) can be found, a first in the Philippines. FE-TEM can magnify materials up to 1.5 million times and is capable of rapid data acquisition.
There are 19 other high-level machines and gadgets that MSD researchers use in its constant blending and re-development. Prof. Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo University of Science coined the nanotechnology term in 1974 to describe the work on semiconductor processes, such as thin-film deposition and ion beam milling, on the order of a nanometer.
Today nanotechnology research mainly consists of the process of separation, consolidation and redevelopment of materials by one atom or one molecule. It offers to the public world-class equipment and devices meant to provide nanotechnology-related technical services.
Explaining the material type chosen by NanoLab, Celorico said, “We decided to rely on what are abundant, unexploited, and natural organic or inorganic nanomaterials.” And so the stakes for the ordinary, dull and everyday nano materials have been raised.
Materials like nanoclay from the Bicol region; cassava and corn starch from your local supplier; and zeolite from Pangasinan have taken the nanoresearch spotlight. Likewise, Camarines Sur supplies silica or quartz. The list also contains other materials, such as natural rubber and halloysite from Mindanao. Calcium carbonate, a substance found in rocks, is also included, among others.
But for Dr. Marissa A. Paglicawan, supervising science research specialist, an environment champion is their team’s 100-percent biodegradable food cutlery. Made from corn starch, industrially termed as thermoplastic starch, and polylactic acid, or PLA, cutleries are rendered degradable.
“Toxin-migration tests conducted by the Packaging Technology Division of Itdi were negative,” Paglicawan related. She noted that, in lab tests, cutleries degraded from within three to four months at low colony of bacteria and fungi.
Those buried in soil with high colony get degraded within a month. A survey conducted by Technical Education and Skills Development Authority in 2014 counted the food services group in the country as totalling 1,093 establishments. It is not hard to imagine the volume of nonbiodegradable cutleries and other food-packaging materials that they use up and throw away.
With Paglicawan’s research on biodegradable foamed food containers, food packaging films, and cutlery from corn and cassava starch, it is easy to picture a low-plastics use in the food industry in the country.