ABSTRACT
2.1 Introduction
The ideas and concepts behind nanoscience and nanotechnology started with a talk entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) on December 29, 1959, long before the term nanotechnology was used. In his talk, Feynman described a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules. Over a decade later, in his explorations of ultra-precision machining, Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology. It was not until 1981, with the development of the scanning tunneling microscope that enabled us to "see" individual atoms that modern nanotechnology began.
