Today, at a meeting together with a working lunch and exhibition visit, the executive bodies of INIC (Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council) held the meeting with a couple of polymer related media, including representatives of PIM (Plastics Industry Magazine) and PIMI Portal.
During the first session Mr. Kadkhodaeie the responsible body for Industrial Promotion, stated with an explanatory presentation using a slide show. He explained what has been done for the development of nanotechnology in Iran, and what will be done in near and long term future.
As it was made clear the nanotechnology in Iran has been initiated in Iran since 1993 with a very strong support of the Government so that the director of the council is one of the vice President of Iran, also the premises and budget belongs to the total structure of the presidency administrative.
So far the INIC (Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council) has been cooperating with 47 countries in the world, and as far as the scientific articles are concerned Iran is in the 4th rank after China, USA and India with a share of 6.33% ISI articles which accounts for 3533 articles.
At the next session Mr. R. Seraj the coordinator of the relations between the council and the industries went on to explain about the achievements.(right side in the left image)
Regarding the industry developments by utilization of nanotechnology as an initiative approach or as the base foundation, by now many Iranian industries have started to produce diverse products on this basis or have modified their conventional production lines using new formula in order to utilize nano particles in their consumer products. The following titles are few examples of these achievements:
* Mass production of Outdoor Light bulbs with hydrophobic nanoscale coating
* An Iranian company produces nanofluids in the industrial scale
However, industrialization of the nanotechnology is not the sole activity of the INIC and in the scientific side they have also a lot say. As an example one may have a look at the following latest news in the scientific section:
A Biosensor for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer:
Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers among women because it is not easy to diagnose and common detection modalities are not entirely reliable.
“In this research project we tried to develop a method to detect and measure ovarian cancer anti-genes with a highly sensitive aptasensor in the presence of other similar anti-genes.This aptasensor is made of reduced graphene oxide nanolayers coated on a flexible polymethyl methacrylate polymer film” said Dr. Abdoolah Salimi a member of the research team. The aptasensor helps diagnose the ovarian cancer quicker and with a higher accuracy than current clinically available techniques.
To increase the surface area and sensitivity of the sensor, in this approach carbon nanotubes are used. Also, reduced nanolayers of graphene oxide behave as field-effect transistor channels which makes the small scale design possible. This method can produce portable micro analyzer systems which can measure anti-gene in infected area without any need for a biopsy.
Dr. Abdoolah Salimi, a faculty member at Kurdistan University and Dr. Samira Majd, Ph.D. graduate from Kurdistan University are two senior researchers who have conducted this research. The results of this research have been now published in a special issue in the journal of Analytica Chimica.
