ABSTRACT
The science and technology of nanoscale materials, devices, and their applications in functionally graded materials, molecular-electronics, nanocomputers, sensors, actuators, and molecular machines form the realm of nanotechnology. The prefix “nano” corresponds to a basic unit on a length scale, meaning 10
meters, which is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than a typical biological cell or bacterium. At few nanometer length scale the devices and systems sizes begin to reach the limit of 10 to 100s of atoms, where even new physical and chemical effects are observed and form the basis for the next generation of cutting-edge products based on the ultimate miniaturization where extended atomic or molecular structures form the basic building blocks. The earliest impetus to the scientific and technological possibility of coaxing individual atomic and molecular building blocks into the making of useful materials, devices, and applications was given by the late Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in a landmark lecture “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” delivered at the American Physical Society
(APS) meeting at Cal Tech in 1959, in which he said, “
The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed — a development which I think cannot be avoided.
