What is nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is technology on the scale of nanometers, ie, billionths (nano) of a meter − one millionth of a millimeter. This is the size scale of atoms. Nanotechnology is the technology of manipulation of atoms to create molecules by design. K. Eric Drexler’s book ENGINES OF CREATION foresees the application of nanotechnology to repair freezing damage in cryonics patients. Even if vitrification technology leads to suspended animation, nanotechnology may still be necessary to repair damage due to disease and aging. For more information on nanotechnology, see Ralph Merkle’s Nanotechnology website.
by Zhong L. Wang Much more than miniaturization Manufacturing nanomaterials Characterizing the performance and properties of nanostructures Large-scale manipulation and self-assembly Large-scale parallel device fabrication and system integration Integrating nanometer-to-millimeter manufacturing technologies Building nanomanufacturing standards Not just an engineering process In the history of industrial engineering, technology characterized by length only occurred in microelectronics, but now we have nanotechnology. How small is one nanometer? The typical width of a human hair is 50 micrometers. One nanometer is 50,000th of a hair width. Nanotechnology is the construction and use of functional structures designed from atomic or molecular scale with at least one characteristic dimension measured in nanometers. Their size allows them to exhibit novel and significantly improved physical, chemical, and biological properties, phenomena, and processes because of their size. When characterist
Nanotechnology is a field of research and innovation concerned with building ‘things’ – generally, materials and devices – on the scale of atoms and molecules. A nanometre is one-billionth of a metre: ten times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. The diameter of a human hair is, on average, 80,000 nanometres. At such scales, the ordinary rules of physics and chemistry no longer apply. For instance, materials’ characteristics, such as their colour, strength, conductivity and reactivity, can differ substantially between the nanoscale and the macro. Carbon ‘nanotubes’ are 100 times stronger than steel but six times lighter.
The word nanotechnology is a combination of the two terms “nano” and “technology.” From this alone, it is apparent that nanotechnology is an application of scientific concepts at the level of molecules and particles, the sizes of which fall within the range of 1 to 100 nanometers. In a nutshell, nanotechnology refers to functional engineering at the level of molecules. Specifically, it is the deliberate application of production processes and technology at the molecular level in the order to achieve a desired result, to manufacture materials and consumables with unique characteristics.
