They are made of silicon - chemically identical to glass - but are 3,000 times less dense due to air pockets that can take up to 600 pounds per square inch of pressure before collapsing and losing insulation capability. They are about three times as effective as present insulation materials of equivalent thickness, or, said another way, three times thinner for the same insulation ability. Their use in clothing, especially for extreme conditions, is obvious but when used for building insulation they have mad R factors and significantly reduce energy consumption. But there is a considerable amount of whingeing about their cost. It is claimed that a combination of savings in construction costs and subsequent energy use makes them cost effective. I want aerogel insoles for my winter boots....

An interesting nanotech application. The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily. The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase...

When faced with necessity the impossible happens. electrons . . . seem to have no size or shape and are impossible to break apart. However, what is true about the properties of a single electron does not seem to be the case when electrons are brought together. Instead the like-charged electrons repel each other and need to modify the way they move to avoid getting too close to each other. In ordinary metals this does not usually make much difference to their behaviour. However, if the electrons are put in a very narrow wire the effects are exacerbated as they find it much harder to move past each other. In 1981, physicist Duncan Haldane conjectured theoretically that under these circumstances and at the lowest temperatures the electrons would always modify the way they behaved so that their magnetism and their charge would separate into two new types of particle called spinons and holons. The challenge was to confine electrons...

I suspect that advances in materials science will drive much of our near-future progress. Graphane has the same honeycomb structure as graphene, except that it is "spray-painted" with hydrogen atoms that attach themselves to the carbon. The resulting bonds between the hydrogen and carbon atoms effectively tie down the electrons that make graphene so conducting. Yet graphane retains the thinness, super-strength, flexibility and density of its older chemical cousin. . . . . . the discovery of graphane opens the flood gates to further chemical modifications of graphene. With metallic graphene at one end and insulating graphane at the other, can we fill in the divide between them with, say, graphene-based semiconductors or by, say, substituting hydrogen for fluorine? As Professor Novoselov writes, "Being able to control the resistivity, optical transmittance and a material's work function would all be important for photonic devices like solar cells and liquid-crystal displays, for example, and altering mechanical properties and surface potential is...