ABSTRACT
Research on nanotechnology and its applications has increased rapidly in recent years, and growing numbers of nanotechnology-based products are already being commercialized (Maynard 2007). Products currently marketed generally tend to be of the incremental or evolutionary type in which either nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, or nanocomposites are incorporated in the product, or a nanotechnologyenabled process such as nanofabrication or nanopatterning is used in manufacturing. As a result of competition to improve existing products by developing higher performance materials, at the same time reducing costs and waste, the industrial applications of nanotechnology should increase rapidly in number. However, the nanomaterials used in products represent only a fraction of the total cost. The economic impact of nanotechnology results mainly from the added value that these materials impart when used in manufacturing products rather than the intrinsic value of the materials themselves.
