We've been involved in nanotechnology since about 2002. A large portion of our sales is nanotechnology for anti-corrosive applications. In coatings, nanotechnology can mean alot of things. It should always mean you have really small stuff in the coating but then you can differentiate between nanoparticles or nanopolymer in the coatings. There are MANY products that claim to have nanotechnology in them that don't perform any better than a product that doesn't. And, it all depends on what the reason is for nano-materials in the coating. For instance, we made a nanotech dispersion of Aluminum Oxide for use in a UV cured coating for laminate flooring. It really increases abrasion resistance... as long as the coating is applied thin enough for a few floating particles to stick out. If the coating is applied to thick... then... the benefit is very minimal. Then, if you use one of our nanotech AntiCor dispersions in a paint to gain corrosion resistance then thickness makes no difference and the smaller the particles are the more anticorrosive effects you will get.
Now, we have nanopolymers... This is quite different than just putting really small stuff into a regular polymer. There are all sorts of implications of what the nanopolymer will bring. As we've found, we've increased the performance of basic waterborne acrylics to outperform their solventbased counterparts at about the same cost. Now, manufaturers can get waterbased nanopolymers to outperform solventbased ones. Al Gore is happy!
As far as the durability... it would be pretty difficult to make a grouping called 'nanotechnology' and say that it is durable or not durable. These technologies are going to be very specific and so will their performance and durability.