Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is any technology which exploits phenomena and structures that can only occur at the nanometer scale, which is the scale of several atoms and small molecules. "Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications." Such phenomena include quantum confinement--which can result in different electromagnetic and optical properties of a material between nanoparticles and the bulk material; the Gibbs-Thomson effect--which is the lowering of the melting point of a material when it is nanometers in size; and such structures including carbon nanotubes. Nanoscience and nanotechnology are an extension of the field of materials science, and materials science departments at universities around the world in conjunction with mechanical engineering, bioengineering, and chemical engineering departments are leading the breakthroughs in nanotechnology.


The related term nanoscience is used to describe the interdisciplinary fields of science devoted to the study of nanoscale phenomena employed in nanotechnology. This is the world of atoms, molecules, macromolecules, quantum dots, and macromolecular assemblies, and is dominated by surface effects such as Van der Waals force attraction, hydrogen bonding, electronic charge, ionic bonding, covalent bonding, hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, and quantum mechanical tunneling, to the virtual exclusion of macro-scale effects such as turbulence and inertia.


For example, the vastly increased ratio of surface area to volume opens new possibilities in surface-based science, such as catalysis.More broadly, nanotechnology includes the many techniques used to create structures at a size scale below 100 nm, including those used for fabrication of nanowires, those used in semiconductor fabrication such as deep ultraviolet lithography, electron beam lithography, focused ion beam machining, Nanoimprint Lithography atomic layer deposition, and molecular vapor deposition, and further including molecular self-assembly techniques such as those employing di-block copolymers.


It should be noted, however, that all of these techniques preceeded the nanotech era, and are extensions in the development of scientific advancements rather than techniques which were devised with the sole purpose of creating nanotechnology or which were results of nanotechnology research.The further developments in the field of nanotechnology focuses on the oscillation of a nanomachine for telecommunication. Since the technology functions at the speeds of gigahertz this could help make communication devices smaller and exchange information at gigahertz speeds. This nanomachine is comprised of 50 billion atoms and is able to oscillate at 1.49 billion times per second. The antenna moves over a distance of one-tenth of a picometer. Advanced nanotechnology, sometimes called molecular manufacturing, is a term given to the concept of engineered nanosystems (nanoscale machines) operating on the molecular scale. By the countless examples found in biology it is currently known that billions of years of evolutionary feedback can produce sophisticated, stochastically optimized biological machines, and it is hoped that developments in nanotechnology will make possible their construction by some shorter means, perhaps using biomimetic principles. A company called nanoink builds a "rapid prototyping" nano structure fabication machine which picks up atom chains and deposits them in a precise manner per the build file.