The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...
is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the
nanoscale
The nanoscopic scale (or nanoscale) usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is (roughly speaking) a lo ...
, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers.
Branches of nanotechnology
* Green nanotechnology – use of nanotechnology to enhance the environmental-sustainability of processes currently producing negative externalities. It also refers to the use of the products of nanotechnology to enhance sustainability.
* Nanoengineering – practice of engineering on the nanoscale.
Multi-disciplinary fields that include nanotechnology
*
Nanobiotechnology
Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blan ...
– intersection of nanotechnology and biology.
*
Ceramic engineering
Ceramic engineering is the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done either by the action of heat, or at lower temperatures using precipitation reactions from high-purity chemical solutions ...
– science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials.
* Materials science – interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. It investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties.
**
Nanoarchitectonics
Nanoarchitectonics is a technology allowing to arrange nano-sized structural units, usually a group of atoms or molecules, in an intended configuration. It employs two major processes: nano-creation and nano-organization. Nano-organization invol ...
– arranging nanoscale structural units, which are usually a group of atoms or molecules, in an intended configuration.
*
Molecular engineering
Molecular engineering is an emerging field of study concerned with the design and testing of molecular properties, behavior and interactions in order to assemble better materials, systems, and processes for specific functions. This approach, in whi ...
Contributing fields
Nanoscience
*
Nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical p ...
– use of nanotechnology on electronic components, including transistors so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical properties need to be studied extensively.
*
Nanomechanics
Nanomechanics is a branch of '' nanoscience'' studying fundamental ''mechanical'' (elastic, thermal and kinetic) properties of physical systems at the nanometer scale. Nanomechanics has emerged on the crossroads of biophysics, classical mechanics, ...
– branch of nanoscience studying fundamental mechanical (elastic, thermal and kinetic) properties of physical systems at the nanometer scale.
*
Nanophotonics
Nanophotonics or nano-optics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, and of the interaction of nanometer-scale objects with light. It is a branch of optics, optical engineering, electrical engineering, and nanotechnolog ...
– study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale.
Other contributing fields
*
Calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizati ...
*
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
*
Computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
*
Engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
*
Miniaturization
Miniaturization ( Br.Eng.: ''Miniaturisation'') is the trend to manufacture ever smaller mechanical, optical and electronic products and devices. Examples include miniaturization of mobile phones, computers and vehicle engine downsizing. In el ...
*
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
*
Protein engineering
Protein engineering is the process of developing useful or valuable proteins. It is a young discipline, with much research taking place into the understanding of protein folding and recognition for protein design principles. It has been used to im ...
*
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
*
Self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffic ...
*
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
*
Supramolecular chemistry
Supramolecular chemistry refers to the branch of chemistry concerning chemical systems composed of a discrete number of molecules. The strength of the forces responsible for spatial organization of the system range from weak intermolecular forces ...
*
Tissue engineering
Tissue engineering is a biomedical engineering discipline that uses a combination of Cell (biology), cells, engineering, Materials science, materials methods, and suitable biochemistry, biochemical and physicochemical factors to restore, maintai ...
*
Robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
*
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
Risks of nanotechnology
Implications of nanotechnology
The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications.
Major benefits of nanotechnolog ...
*
Health impact of nanotechnology
The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications.
Major benefits of nanotechnolo ...
Quantum computing
Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...
– computation using quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform data operations.
* List of nanotechnology applications
Nanomaterials
*
Nanomaterials
*
Nanomaterials describe, in principle, materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale).
Nanomaterials research takes a materials science-based approach to n ...
– field that studies materials with morphological features on the nanoscale, and especially those that have special properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions.
Fullerenes and carbon forms
Fullerene
A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecule consists of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to seven atoms. The molecule may be a hollow sphere, ...
– any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Fullerene spheres and tubes have applications in nanotechnology.
*
Allotropes of carbon
Carbon is capable of forming many allotropes (structurally different forms of the same element) due to its valency. Well-known forms of carbon include diamond and graphite. In recent decades, many more allotropes have been discovered and res ...
–
*
Aggregated diamond nanorods
Aggregated diamond nanorods, or ADNRs, are a nanocrystalline form of diamond, also known as nanodiamond or hyperdiamond.
Discovery
Nanodiamond or hyperdiamond was produced by compression of graphite in 2003 by a group of researchers in Japa ...
–
*
Buckypaper
Buckypaper is a thin sheet made from an aggregate of carbon nanotubes or carbon nanotube grid paper. The nanotubes are approximately 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Originally, it was fabricated as a way to handle carbon nanotubes, but i ...
Carbon nanotube
A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube
Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers.
''Single-wall carbon na ...
Nanotube membrane
Nanotube membranes are either a single, open-ended nanotube(CNT) or a film composed of an array of nanotubes that are oriented perpendicularly to the surface of an impermeable film matrix like the cells of a honeycomb. 'Impermeable' is essential ...
–
*
Fullerene chemistry
Fullerene chemistry is a field of organic chemistry devoted to the chemical properties of fullerenes. Research in this field is driven by the need to functionalize fullerenes and tune their properties. For example, fullerene is notoriously insolub ...
–
**
Bingel reaction The Bingel reaction in fullerene chemistry is a fullerene cyclopropanation reaction to a methanofullerene first discovered by C. Bingel in 1993 with the bromo derivative of diethyl malonate in the presence of a base such as sodium hydride or D ...
–
**
Endohedral hydrogen fullerene Endohedral hydrogen fullerene ( H2@ C60) is an endohedral fullerene containing molecular hydrogen. This chemical compound has a potential application in molecular electronics and was synthesized in 2005 at Kyoto University by the group of Koichi Kom ...
–
**
Prato reaction
The Prato reaction is a particular example of the well-known 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azomethine ylides to olefins. In fullerene chemistry this reaction refers to the functionalization of fullerenes and Carbon nanotube, nanotubes. The amino aci ...
–
*
Endohedral fullerenes
Endohedral fullerenes, also called endofullerenes, are fullerenes that have additional atoms, ions, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. The first lanthanum C60 complex called La@C60 was synthesized in 1985. The @ (at sign) in the n ...
Graphene
Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.
Timeline of carbon nanotubes
__NOTOC__
1952
* Radushkevich and Lukyanovich publish a paper in the Soviet ''Journal of Physical Chemistry'' showing hollow graphitic carbon fibers that are 50 nanometers in diameter.
1955
* Hofer, Sterling and McCarney observe a growth o ...
–
Nanoparticles and colloids
Nanoparticle
A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is usually defined as a particle of matter that is between 1 and 100 nanometres (nm) in diameter. The term is sometimes used for larger particles, up to 500 nm, or fibers and tubes that are less than 10 ...
–
*
Ceramics processing
Ceramic engineering is the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done either by the action of heat, or at lower temperatures using precipitation reactions from high-purity chemical solutions ...
–
*
Colloid
A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a liquid, while others extend ...
Nanocomposite
Nanocomposite is a multiphase solid material where one of the phases has one, two or three dimensions of less than 100 nanometers (nm) or structures having nano-scale repeat distances between the different phases that make up the material.
The id ...
–
*
Nanocrystal
A ''nanocrystal'' is a material particle having at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres, based on quantum dots
(a nanoparticle) and composed of atoms in either a single- or poly-crystalline arrangement.
The size of nanocrystals dist ...
–
*
Nanostructure
A nanostructure is a structure of intermediate size between microscopic and molecular structures. Nanostructural detail is microstructure at nanoscale.
In describing nanostructures, it is necessary to differentiate between the number of dimens ...
Nanocomposite
Nanocomposite is a multiphase solid material where one of the phases has one, two or three dimensions of less than 100 nanometers (nm) or structures having nano-scale repeat distances between the different phases that make up the material.
The id ...
Nanofiber
Nanofibers are fibers with diameters in the nanometer range (typically, between 1 nm and 1 μm). Nanofibers can be generated from different polymers and hence have different physical properties and application potentials. Examples of natural polyme ...
–
**
Nanofoam
Nanofoams are a class of nanostructured, porous materials (foams) containing a significant population of pores with diameters less than 100 nm. Aerogels are one example of nanofoam.
Metal
Overview
Metallic nanofoams are a subcategorization ...
Nanopillar
Nanopillars is an emerging technology within the field of nanostructures. Nanopillars are pillar shaped nanostructures approximately 10 nanometers in diameter that can be grouped together in lattice like arrays. They are a type of metamaterial, whi ...
Quantum dot
Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor particles a few nanometres in size, having optical and electronic properties that differ from those of larger particles as a result of quantum mechanics. They are a central topic in nanotechnology. When the ...
Sculptured thin film Sculptured thin films (STFs) are nanostructured materials with unidirectionally varying properties that can be designed and realized in a controllable manner using variants of physical vapor deposition. The ability to virtually instantaneously cha ...
–
Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. Nanomedicine ranges from the medical applications of nanomaterials and biological devices, to nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotech ...
–
*
Lab-on-a-chip
A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) is a device that integrates one or several laboratory functions on a single integrated circuit (commonly called a "chip") of only millimeters to a few square centimeters to achieve automation and high-throughput screening. ...
–
*
Nanobiotechnology
Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blan ...
Molecular self-assembly
In chemistry and materials science, molecular self-assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. There are two types of self-assembly: intramolecular and intermol ...
DNA computing
DNA computing is an emerging branch of unconventional computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional electronic computing. Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, a ...
–
**
DNA machine A DNA machine is a molecular machine constructed from DNA. Research into DNA machines was pioneered in the late 1980s by Nadrian Seeman and co-workers from New York University. DNA is used because of the numerous biological tools already found in ...
–
**
DNA origami
DNA origami is the nanoscale folding of DNA to create arbitrary two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale. The specificity of the interactions between complementary base pairs make DNA a useful construction material, through design of ...
–
*
Self-assembled monolayer
Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of organic molecules are molecular assemblies formed spontaneously on surfaces by adsorption and are organized into more or less large ordered domains. In some cases molecules that form the monolayer do not interact ...
–
*
Supramolecular assembly
In chemistry, a supramolecular assembly is a complex of molecules held together by noncovalent bonds. While a supramolecular assembly can be simply composed of two molecules (e.g., a DNA double helix or an inclusion compound), or a defined num ...
–
Nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical p ...
Chemical vapor deposition
Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a vacuum deposition method used to produce high quality, and high-performance, solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films.
In typical CVD, the wafer (subst ...
–
*
Microelectromechanical systems
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, ...
Nanocomputer Nanocomputer refers to a computer smaller than the microcomputer, which is smaller than the minicomputer.
Microelectronic components that are at the core of all modern electronic devices employ semiconductor transistors. The term nanocomputer is ...
Surface micromachining
Surface micromachining builds microstructures by deposition and etching structural layers over a substrate. This is different from Bulk micromachining, in which a silicon substrate wafer is selectively etched to produce structures.
Layers
Gene ...
–
*
Nanoelectromechanical relay A nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relay is an electrically actuated switch that is built on the nanometer scale using semiconductor fabrication techniques. They are designed to operate in replacement of, or in conjunction with, traditional semiconductor ...
s
Molecular electronics
Molecular electronics
Molecular electronics is the study and application of molecular building blocks for the fabrication of electronic components. It is an interdisciplinary area that spans physics, chemistry, and materials science. The unifying feature is use of mo ...
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Nanolithography
Nanolithography
Nanolithography (NL) is a growing field of techniques within nanotechnology dealing with the engineering (patterning e.g. etching, depositing, writing, printing etc) of nanometer-scale structures on various materials.
The modern term reflects on ...
Ion-beam sculpting Ion-Beam sculpting is a two-step process to make solid-state nanopores. The term itself was coined by Golovchenko and co-workers at Harvard in the paper "Ion-beam sculpting at nanometer length scales." In the process, solid-state nanopores are for ...
–
*
Nanoimprint lithography
Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple nanolithography process with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. It creates patterns by mechanical deformation of imprint resist and subse ...
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*
Photolithography
In integrated circuit manufacturing, photolithography or optical lithography is a general term used for techniques that use light to produce minutely patterned thin films of suitable materials over a substrate, such as a silicon wafer, to protec ...
–
*
Scanning probe lithography
Scanning probe lithography (SPL) describes a set of nanolithographic methods to pattern material on the nanoscale using scanning probes. It is a direct-write, mask-less approach which bypasses the diffraction limit and can reach resolutions bel ...
–
*
Molecular self-assembly
In chemistry and materials science, molecular self-assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. There are two types of self-assembly: intramolecular and intermol ...
Molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials. Based on Richard Feynman's vision of miniatur ...
–
*
Grey goo
Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass on Earth while building many more of themselves, a sce ...
–
*
Mechanosynthesis
Mechanosynthesis is a term for hypothetical chemical syntheses in which reaction outcomes are determined by the use of mechanical constraints to direct reactive molecules to specific molecular sites. There are presently no non-biological chemica ...
–
*
Molecular assembler
A molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecul ...
–
*
Molecular modelling
Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials sci ...
–
*
Nanorobotics
Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...
Utility fog
Utility fog (also referred to as foglets) is a hypothetical collection of tiny nanobots that can replicate a physical structure.Nanochondria –
*
Programmable matter
Programmable matter is matter which has the ability to change its physical properties (shape, density, moduli, conductivity, optical properties, etc.) in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing. Programmable matter is ...
Self-replication
Self-replication is any behavior of a dynamical system that yields construction of an identical or similar copy of itself. Biological cells, given suitable environments, reproduce by cell division. During cell division, DNA is replicated and c ...
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Devices
*
Micromachinery
Micromachines are mechanical objects that are fabricated in the same general manner as integrated circuits. They are generally considered to be between 100 nanometres to 100 micrometres in size, though that is debatable. The applications of ...
Nanomotor
A nanomotor is a molecular or nanoscale device capable of converting energy into movement. It can typically generate forces on the order of piconewtons.
While nanoparticles have been utilized by artists for centuries, such as in the famous Lycu ...
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*
Nanopore
A nanopore is a pore of nanometer size. It may, for example, be created by a pore-forming protein or as a hole in synthetic materials such as silicon or graphene.
When a nanopore is present in an electrically insulating membrane, it can be used ...
–
**
Nanopore sequencing
Nanopore sequencing is a third generation approach used in the sequencing of biopolymers — specifically, polynucleotides in the form of DNA or RNA.
Using nanopore sequencing, a single molecule of DNA or RNA can be sequenced without the nee ...
Microscopy
Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of micr ...
–
*
Atomic force microscope
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the op ...
–
*
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...
–
*
Scanning probe microscope
Scan may refer to:
Acronyms
* Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN), a psychiatric diagnostic tool developed by WHO
* Shared Check Authorization Network (SCAN), a database of bad check writers and collection agency for bad ...
–
*
Sarfus
Sarfus is an optical quantitative imaging technique based on the association of:
*an upright or inverted optical microscope in crossed polarization configuration and
*specific supporting plates – called surfs – on which the sample to observe i ...
National Cancer Institute
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...
(US)
*
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...
Russian Nanotechnology Corporation
Rusnano Group (russian: Роснано АО, lit=Rosnano plc.) is a Russian state-established and funded company. The Rusnano Group's mission is to create competitive nanotechnology-based industry in Russia. Rusnano invests directly and through i ...
American Chemistry Council
American Chemistry Council (ACC), formerly known as the Manufacturing Chemists' Association (at its founding in 1872) and then as the Chemical Manufacturers' Association (from 1978 until 2000), is an industry trade association for American chemic ...
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies was established in 2005 as a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Project was intended to address the social, political, and public sa ...
(global)
Manufacturers
* Cerion Nanomaterials, Metal / Metal Oxide / Ceramic Nanoparticles (US)
*
OCSiAl
OCSiAl is a global nanotechnology company, the world's largest graphene nanotube manufacturer, conducting its operations worldwide. The OCSiAl headquarters are located in Luxembourg, with several offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Th ...
, Carbon Nanotubes (Luxembourg)
Notable figures in nanotechnology
*
Phaedon Avouris
Phaedon Avouris ( el, Φαίδων Αβούρης; born 1945) is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Resea ...
- first electronic devices made out of
carbon nanotubes
A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube
Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers.
''Single-wall carbon na ...
*
Gerd Binnig
Gerd Binnig (; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
Early life and education
Binnig wa ...
- co-inventor of the
scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...
*
Heinrich Rohrer
Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst ...
- co-inventor of the
scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...
- gave the first mention of some of the distinguishing concepts in a 1959 talk
*
Robert Freitas
Robert A. Freitas Jr. (born 1952) is an American nanotechnologist.
Career
In 1974, Freitas earned a bachelor's degree in both physics and psychology from Harvey Mudd College, and in 1978, he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Santa Clara ...
- nanomedicine theorist
*
Andre Geim
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, death_date =
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- Discoverer of 2-D carbon film called
graphene
Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.
carbon nanotube
A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube
Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers.
''Single-wall carbon na ...
*
Harry Kroto
Sir Harold Walter Kroto (born Harold Walter Krotoschiner; 7 October 1939 – 30 April 2016), known as Harry Kroto, was an English chemist. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery ...
- co-discoverer of
buckminsterfullerene
Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, and resembles a soccer ball. Each of its 60 carbon atoms is bonded ...
sculptured thin film Sculptured thin films (STFs) are nanostructured materials with unidirectionally varying properties that can be designed and realized in a controllable manner using variants of physical vapor deposition. The ability to virtually instantaneously cha ...
Carlo Montemagno
Carlo Montemagno (August 7, 1956 – October 11, 2018) was an American engineer and expert in nanotechnology and biomedical engineering, focusing on futuristic technologies to create interdisciplinary solutions for the grand challenges in health ...
Erwin Wilhelm Müller
Erwin Wilhelm Müller (or ''Mueller'') (June 13, 1911 – May 17, 1977) was a German physicist who invented the Field Emission Electron Microscope (FEEM), the Field Ion Microscope (FIM), and the Atom-Probe Field Ion Microscope. He and his st ...
- invented the
field ion microscope
The Field ion microscope (FIM) was invented by Müller in 1951. It is a type of microscope that can be used to image the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip.
On October 11, 1955, Erwin Müller and his Ph.D. student, Kanwa ...
, and the
atom probe
The atom probe was introduced at th14th Field Emission Symposium in 1967by Erwin Wilhelm Müller and J. A. Panitz. It combined a field ion microscope with a mass spectrometer having a single particle detection capability and, for the first time ...
Uri Sivan
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buckminsterfullerene
Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, and resembles a soccer ball. Each of its 60 carbon atoms is bonded ...
*
Norio Taniguchi
was a professor of Tokyo University of Science. He coined the term '' nano-technology'' in 1974
N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'Nano-Technology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng.
Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974. ...
Joseph Wang
Joseph Wang is an American researcher and inventor. He is a Distinguished Professor, SAIC Endowed Chair, and former Chair of the Department of Nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who specialised in nanomachines, biosenso ...
Alex Zettl
Alex Zettl is an American professor of experimental condensed-matter physics. His research involving the properties of novel materials has produced significant advances in the field.
Biography
Zettl received a B.A. degree from the University of ...
Catalyst
Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...
*
Macromolecule
A macromolecule is a very large molecule important to biophysical processes, such as a protein or nucleic acid. It is composed of thousands of covalently bonded atoms. Many macromolecules are polymers of smaller molecules called monomers. The ...
*
Mesh networking
A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...
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Monolayer A monolayer is a single, closely packed layer of atoms, molecules, or cells. In some cases it is referred to as a self-assembled monolayer. Monolayers of layered crystals like graphene and molybdenum disulfide are generally called 2D materials.
C ...
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Nanometer
330px, Different lengths as in respect to the molecular scale.
The nanometre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: nm) or nanometer (American and British English spelling differences#-re, ...
Photonic crystal
A photonic crystal is an optical nanostructure in which the refractive index changes periodically. This affects the propagation of light in the same way that the structure of natural crystals gives rise to X-ray diffraction and that the atomic ...
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Potential well
A potential well is the region surrounding a local minimum of potential energy. Energy captured in a potential well is unable to convert to another type of energy ( kinetic energy in the case of a gravitational potential well) because it is ca ...
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Quantum confinement
A potential well is the region surrounding a local minimum of potential energy. Energy captured in a potential well is unable to convert to another type of energy ( kinetic energy in the case of a gravitational potential well) because it is ca ...
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Quantum tunneling
In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizati ...
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Self-assembly
Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the ...
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Self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffic ...
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Technological singularity
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...
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History of nanotechnology
The history of nanotechnology traces the development of the concepts and experimental work falling under the broad category of nanotechnology. Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of ...
Nanotechnology in fiction
The use of nanotechnology in fiction has attracted scholarly attention. The first use of the distinguishing concepts of nanotechnology was "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959. K. Eric Drexle ...
* Outline of nanotechnology
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Impact of nanotechnology
The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications.
Major benefits of nanotechnology ...
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Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. Nanomedicine ranges from the medical applications of nanomaterials and biological devices, to nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotech ...
Health and safety hazards of nanomaterials
The health and safety hazards of nanomaterials include the potential toxicity of various types of nanomaterials, as well as fire and dust explosion hazards. Because nanotechnology is a recent development, the health and safety effects of exposu ...
Nanomaterials
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Nanomaterials describe, in principle, materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale).
Nanomaterials research takes a materials science-based approach to n ...
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Fullerene
A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecule consists of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to seven atoms. The molecule may be a hollow sphere, ...
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Carbon nanotube
A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube
Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers.
''Single-wall carbon na ...
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Nanoparticle
A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is usually defined as a particle of matter that is between 1 and 100 nanometres (nm) in diameter. The term is sometimes used for larger particles, up to 500 nm, or fibers and tubes that are less than 10 ...
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Molecular self-assembly
In chemistry and materials science, molecular self-assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. There are two types of self-assembly: intramolecular and intermol ...
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Self-assembled monolayer
Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of organic molecules are molecular assemblies formed spontaneously on surfaces by adsorption and are organized into more or less large ordered domains. In some cases molecules that form the monolayer do not interact ...
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Supramolecular assembly
In chemistry, a supramolecular assembly is a complex of molecules held together by noncovalent bonds. While a supramolecular assembly can be simply composed of two molecules (e.g., a DNA double helix or an inclusion compound), or a defined num ...
Nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical p ...
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Molecular scale electronics
Molecular scale electronics, also called single-molecule electronics, is a branch of nanotechnology that uses single molecules, or nanoscale collections of single molecules, as electronic components. Because single molecules constitute the smalle ...
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Nanolithography
Nanolithography (NL) is a growing field of techniques within nanotechnology dealing with the engineering (patterning e.g. etching, depositing, writing, printing etc) of nanometer-scale structures on various materials.
The modern term reflects on ...
Atomic force microscopy
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the opt ...
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Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...
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Electron microscope
An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...
Molecular nanotechnology
Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials. Based on Richard Feynman's vision of miniatur ...
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Molecular assembler
A molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecul ...
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Nanorobotics
Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...
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Mechanosynthesis
Mechanosynthesis is a term for hypothetical chemical syntheses in which reaction outcomes are determined by the use of mechanical constraints to direct reactive molecules to specific molecular sites. There are presently no non-biological chemica ...
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Molecular engineering
Molecular engineering is an emerging field of study concerned with the design and testing of molecular properties, behavior and interactions in order to assemble better materials, systems, and processes for specific functions. This approach, in whi ...
Further reading
* '' Engines of Creation'', by Eric Drexler
* ''Nanosystems'', by Eric Drexler
* ''Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea'' by
Mark
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Finn ...
and Daniel Ratner,
* ''There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom'' by
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...
* The challenges of nanotechnology by Claire Auplat
Institute of Occupational Medicine The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) was founded in 1969 by the National Coal Board (NCB) as an independent charity in the UK and retains this charitable purpose and status today. The "Institute" has a subsidiary, IOM Consulting Limited, whi ...
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...