U.S.-based Ford Motor Company has announced an initiative to develop nanotechnology-based materials that can reduce the weight of its cars. Researchers are hoping to reduce the cars’ weights by 113 to 340 kilograms, depending on the model, in order to achieve a 40 percent increase in fuel efficiency by 2020. Ford is focusing on developing exterior paints that adhere better, chip less, and more efficiently dissipate heat.

Nanotechnology is technology which takes advantage of the unique properties of matter when it is so small it can be measured in nanometers (generally 1 to 100 nm). One nanometer is one billionth of a meter, or approximately 1/10,000th the size of the width of a single hair.

When matter gets this small, materials take on new properties. In some cases, for example, melting points get lowered through the Gibbs-Thomson effect. In other cases, matter will conduct more or less electricity when it is nanosized, making this change useful in producing semiconductors. Also, some elements become catalysts on the nanoscale, like gold. Gold is normally inert, but on the nanoscale it is a very strong catalyst.