Starting From the Ground up With Nanotechnology Standardization
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 While the concept of nanotechnology (if not the word itself) has been around since as early as 1959, it has only been in more recent years that interest in its industrial applications has grown. Previously, much of the work in nanotechnology was performed in relative isolation in individual labs. But as the discipline moves from a lab environment to an industrial one, those interested in the technology are calling for the development of standards that would help improve consistency across the nanotechnology field. And for at least two organizations involved in developing standards, this has meant starting from the ground up by defining some basic terms.
In 2005, ASTM International formed Committee E56 on Nanotechnology, which is dedicated to developing standards for a variety of nanotechnology applications, after being approached by members of Rice University.
“The group was an academic and nanotechnology business consortium supported by industry, non-profit foundations and governments that decided the time was right to develop some type of dictionary for nanotechnology—a terminology document or series of terms to be defined so that this community could speak the same language. Because even relative to the definition of nanotechnology, everyone has their own specific application and definition. This was causing confusion in a variety of marketplace settings,” says Pat Picariello, ASTM director of developmental operations.
Last December, the committee released its first standard, E 2456-06, Terminology for Nanotechnology, which provides definitions for 13 terms specific to the industry. This is significantly less than the approximately 100 terms originally proposed by the committee.
With a large number of participants from around the world, including members of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), NSF International and SEMI, it’s not surprising that the committee started with a shorter list of terms, says Picariello.
“Because of the diversity represented on E56, and just from the nanotechnology community in general, it’s not surprising. If you’re coming from an industry perspective versus a medical perspective versus a regulatory perspective, everyone has their own needs and their own issues regarding what these terms should mean.”
He also points out that unlike many other ASTM committees, E56 has representatives from the legal community who are very interested in developing a clear definition of terms such as nanotechnology and the prefix nano for use in patents. “The definitions of these terms mean are very important. So the legal community is also very actively engaged inside E56, which makes for a different dynamic than most traditional standards development groups. You usually don’t have the legal community involved unless and until something happens. In this case they’re there up front. And it’s been great, because they bring a specificity to the work that I think has made this particular terminology document much stronger,” Picariello says.
But ASTM isn’t the only organization to have started its standardization efforts with a terminology document. In 2005, BSI released the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 71:2005, Vocabulary—Nanoparticles. Rather than trying to encompass nanotechnology as a whole, the document focuses on a subset of the discipline, nanoparticles, which it defines as a “particle with one or more dimensions at the nanoscale.” The nanoscale, in turn, is defined as “having one or more dimensions of the order of 100 nm or less.”
“We felt that developing a terminology document for nanoparticles was going to be supportive of the nanoparticle industry in the UK, which is quite important within the UK’s ‘nano’ business sector. It’s not a massive industry, but I don’t think any country has a massive nanotechnology industry yet even though everyone projects nanotechnology to become hugely influential within a few years. But nanoparticles are quite an important part of the activity in the UK. There are a lot of research teams and there are a number of companies that are actively producing nanoparticles for commercial application,” says Dr. Peter Hatto, chair of the BSI Committee for Nanotechnologies (NTI/1) and director of research for IonBond Limited.
The committee is also working on other terminology documents, which it hopes to publish as PASs by the end of the year. These include documents defining terms associated with nanomaterials; carbon nanostructures; nanotechnology medical, health and personal care applications; nanofabrication; nanoscale measurements methods; and biological nanomaterials. And as with the earlier PAS 71, all of these documents will be made available as free downloads on BSI’s website.
“The PAS route provides a standards publication that can be made available quickly in order to give stakeholders a document that they can use whilst they are waiting for more formal national or international standards. As all of the documents are being developed by groups of experts in the respective areas and will be subject to international review before publication, users can be confident that they will represent the current state of the art,” explains Hatto, who is also chair of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee for Nanotechnologies, ISO/TC 229.
However, publication of the PASs will not be the end of the line, says Hatto. “Each of these documents will be used as the basis of new work item proposals to ISO/TC 229, giving the international community an opportunity to harmonize definitions for all of the terms specific to nanotechnologies.”
ISO/TC 229 was established in June 2005 and currently has 29 “P” and 10 “O” members as well as a substantial number of liaisons, in particular with the International Electrotechnical Commission’s and the European Committee for Standardization’s technical committees in the area, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Asia Nano Forum, the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards and 15 other ISO technical committees. It has an active program of work which is being undertaken in its three working groups: Terminology and Nomenclature (WG1, convened by Canada), Measurement and Characterization (WG2, convened by Japan), and Health, Safety and Environment Effects (WG3, convened by the United States).
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