ABSTRACT
Progress in electronics has been driven by miniaturization. However, electronic devices are approaching molecular scale, thus exercising spurious electrons whose dynamic behavior is at the nanoscale. Nanostructured systems could offer electronic performance beyond what is possible with current very large-scale integrated circuits. Moreover, by enabling the possibility of devices that are low cost and simultaneously flexible, transparent, and lightweight, nanostructured solutions are appealing to nearly any device system. To fully understand nanostructured device dynamic behavior requires an understanding of quantum mechanics and quantization, the wave-particle duality, wavefunctions, and their computational limits, to name a few. This chapter does not dwell into device dynamic behavioral studies per se, but rather provides an overview of the electronic properties of nanomaterials from bulk to nanoscale, the crystallites’ size reduction effect, and the principles of operating technology enabling fabrication of nanoscale structures.
