ABSTRACT
The word “nano” is derived from the Greek word “nanos,” which means dwarfs. Richard Feynman (1918-1988), the Nobel laureate physicist, first mentioned the concept of “nanosized materials” (not yet using that name) in his speech (APS meeting Dec 29, 1959) titled There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom [1]. Later in 1974, Professor Norio Taniguchi from Tokyo Science University, Japan, coined the term nanotechnology to describe the arts and science of manipulating atoms and molecules to create new systems, materials, and devices. The term nanotechnology was then reintroduced and popularized by California scientist and author Eric Drexler. In 1981, the advent of the scanning tunneling microscope enabled atom clusters to be seen, while in 1991 IBM demonstrated the ability to arrange individual xenon atoms using an atomic force instrument [2, 3].
