Smart nanotextiles for communication

Together with wireless technology, advances in nanotechnology and rapid and scalable synthesis of nanomaterials including the 2D graphene has transformed the realms of biomedical sciences. Recent research in the areas of drug delivery, cancer therapy, bio-sensing and bio-imaging have exploited the unique structural and physiological features of graphene and its different forms. Along with the Graphene, several other nanomaterials including carbon nanotubes (CNTs), make excellent candidates for applications associated with loading of drugs, cellular imaging, sensing other molecules and in-vivo cancer studies due to their biocompatibility and stability. Assimilating from the fundamentals of electromagnetic, wireless communication, medical and material science, a novel concept of nanonetworks was first introduced in 2008, which stems from the concept that a collection of nanodevices have the potential to harness the innate communication capabilities of the human body, thereby allowing them to cooperate and share information. It is anticipated that the advanced healthcare diagnosis can be realised if an efficient communication mechanism and data transfer are established between these nanodevices. The human body is a good example of a naturally existing communication network. For instance, the nervous system is composed of nerve cells, i.e. neurons that communicate the external stimulus to the brain and enable the communication between different systems by conveying information with a molecular impulse signal known as a spike. The human body needs communication amongst different cells to survive, the proposed intra- and inter-body nanonetworks ensure their stability without mechanically (or physically) disturbing the harmony of the in-built molecular structure of the body. Moreover, in several cases, the medicine technology fails to understand the root cause of the problem but once we have a monitoring network established in our body, we can extract various unknowns and treat them effectively. The vision of nanoscale networking attempts to achieve the functionality and performance of the internet with the exception that node size is measured in nanometres and channels are physically separated by up to hundreds or thousands of nanometres. In addition, nodes are assumed to be mobile and rapidly deployable. Nodes (or nanodevices) are expected to be either self-powered or spread in and around the specific location. In a visionary sense, an ultimate application of nanoscale networking would be an automated process, where the nano-nodes are in motion communicating in a complex dynamic environment of living organisms monitoring diseased or sensitive parts of the body