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Advances and challenges towards consumerization of nanomaterials

Nature Nanotechnology volume 15, pages 964–965 (2020)Cite this article

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The Nanodatabase (www.nanodb.dk) is an online inventory of products — which can either be bought in Europe or ordered online and shipped to a European location — that according to their manufacturers or other stakeholders contain nanomaterials. It contained a little more than a 1,000 products when it was launched in 2012. On 1 November 2020, scientists at the department of environmental engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, including the present authors, added product number 5,000. Such a high number of commercial products suggests that nanotechnology and nanomaterials have entered what is known as consumerization1. Consumerization is signified by the fact that a given technology goes all the way from the research and development in a laboratory to enterprise and then into our stores, homes, pockets and bodies. Nanotechnology and nanomaterials must be considered as part of a mass market, rather than a niche market as it perhaps was until a few years ago.

From the outset, The Nanodatabase was meant to provide an overview of consumer products in Europe, complementing the inventory developed by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies2, which has focused primarily on products commercialized in North America and Asia3. The information collected includes details such as the name of the products, the connection to nanomaterials as claimed by the producers, the country of origin, the nanomaterials used, the location of the nanomaterial in the product, and, importantly, the most likely human or environmental exposure route. The Nanodatabase is also equipped with a number of analytical tools, thereby allowing anyone to sort and extract and display data in different ways4.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of products included in The Nanodatabase.

References

  1. Jolly, V. K. Commercializing New Technologies (Harvard Business School Press, 1997).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Steffen Foss Hansen, Oliver Foss Hessner Hansen & Maria Bille Nielsen

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  1. Steffen Foss Hansen
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  2. Oliver Foss Hessner Hansen
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  3. Maria Bille Nielsen
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Correspondence to Steffen Foss Hansen.

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Hansen, S.F., Hansen, O.F.H. & Nielsen, M.B. Advances and challenges towards consumerization of nanomaterials. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 964–965 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-00819-7

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