Nanotechnologies and nanomaterials for construction - Building and urban environment

Can a world as traditional as building and civil engineering – "BTP" for short – be fertile ground for innovations involving the mastery of materials on length scales approaching those of atoms and molecules? Not so long ago, this would have seemed a far-fetched question, given that the desire for tradition and the perpetuation of know-how were at the heart of preoccupations, particularly in the world of construction. For the individual, the only driving force behind change was the desire for greater comfort, and for industry, the drive for greater rationality, efficiency and profitability.

Things have changed, even if the above-mentioned motivations remain valid. Concerns about energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving natural resources, sustainability and recyclability, maintaining biodiversity, and safety too, have now taken precedence over the previous ones, or at least complement them. This opens up new prospects for innovation. However, there are still two specific features of the construction world to which nanotechnologies must adapt. The first is the scale – in terms of volume, tonnage and number of parts – at which these technologies must be able to spread. No other field of human activity rivals construction in this respect. The second specificity, which actually stems from the first, is what we might call the rusticity or, more precisely, the imperative robustness of their implementation. A technology is only likely to become widespread in the construction world if it is compatible with relatively simple implementation and, if possible, tolerant (robust) to procedural deviations.

The world of "construction" actually covers several technically distinct fields. The first is building, i.e. essentially individual or collective housing –– and commercial buildings. The second covers the major infrastructures of what is usually referred to as civil engineering....