The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:

Nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...

is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the

nanoscale The nanoscopic scale (or nanoscale) usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is (roughly speaking) a lo ...

, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers.

Branches of nanotechnology

Green nanotechnology Green nanotechnology refers to the use of nanotechnology to enhance the environmental sustainability of processes producing negative externalities. It also refers to the use of the products of nanotechnology to enhance sustainability. It includes ...

– use of nanotechnology to enhance the environmental-sustainability of processes currently producing negative externalities. It also refers to the use of the products of nanotechnology to enhance sustainability. *

Nanoengineering Nanoengineering is the practice of engineering on the nanoscale. It derives its name from the nanometre, a unit of measurement equalling one billionth of a meter. Nanoengineering is largely a synonym for nanotechnology, but emphasizes the enginee ...

– practice of engineering on the nanoscale.

Multi-disciplinary fields that include nanotechnology

Nanobiotechnology Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blan ...

– intersection of nanotechnology and biology. *

Ceramic engineering Ceramic engineering is the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done either by the action of heat, or at lower temperatures using precipitation reactions from high-purity chemical solutions ...

– science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. * Materials science – interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. It investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. ** Nanoarchitectonics – arranging nanoscale structural units, which are usually a group of atoms or molecules, in an intended configuration. *

Molecular engineering Molecular engineering is an emerging field of study concerned with the design and testing of molecular properties, behavior and interactions in order to assemble better materials, systems, and processes for specific functions. This approach, in whi ...

Contributing fields

Nanoscience

Nanoelectronics Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical ...

– use of nanotechnology on electronic components, including transistors so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical properties need to be studied extensively. *

Nanomechanics Nanomechanics is a branch of ''nanoscience'' studying fundamental ''mechanical'' (elastic, thermal and kinetic) properties of physical systems at the nanometer scale. Nanomechanics has emerged on the crossroads of biophysics, classical mechanics, s ...

– branch of nanoscience studying fundamental mechanical (elastic, thermal and kinetic) properties of physical systems at the nanometer scale. *

Nanophotonics Nanophotonics or nano-optics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, and of the interaction of nanometer-scale objects with light. It is a branch of optics, optical engineering, electrical engineering, and nanotechnology. It ...

– study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale.

Other contributing fields

Calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizati ...

* Chemistry *

Computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

Engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

Miniaturization Miniaturization ( Br.Eng.: ''Miniaturisation'') is the trend to manufacture ever smaller mechanical, optical and electronic products and devices. Examples include miniaturization of mobile phones, computers and vehicle engine downsizing. In e ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

Protein engineering Protein engineering is the process of developing useful or valuable proteins. It is a young discipline, with much research taking place into the understanding of protein folding and recognition for protein design principles. It has been used to im ...

Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

Self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffic ...

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

Supramolecular chemistry Supramolecular chemistry refers to the branch of chemistry concerning chemical systems composed of a discrete number of molecules. The strength of the forces responsible for spatial organization of the system range from weak intermolecular force ...

Tissue engineering Tissue engineering is a biomedical engineering discipline that uses a combination of cells, engineering, materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physicochemical factors to restore, maintain, improve, or replace different types of biologi ...

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, and Health promotion ...

Risks of nanotechnology

Implications of nanotechnology The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications. Major benefits of nanotechnology ...

* Health impact of nanotechnology * Environmental impact of nanotechnology *

Regulation of nanotechnology Because of the ongoing controversy on the implications of nanotechnology, there is significant debate concerning whether nanotechnology or nanotechnology-based products merit special government regulation. This mainly relates to when to assess ...

* Societal impact of nanotechnology

Applications of nanotechnology

Energy applications of nanotechnology As the world's energy demand continues to grow, the development of more efficient and sustainable technologies for generating and storing energy is becoming increasingly important. According to Dr. Wade Adams from Rice University, energy will b ...

Quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thou ...

– computation using quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform data operations. *

List of nanotechnology applications The applications of nanotechnology, commonly incorporate industrial, medicinal, and energy uses. These include more durable construction materials, therapeutic drug delivery, and higher density hydrogen fuel cells that are environmentally friendly. ...

Nanomaterials

Nanomaterials * Nanomaterials describe, in principle, materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science-based approach to n ...

– field that studies materials with morphological features on the nanoscale, and especially those that have special properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions.

Fullerenes and carbon forms

Fullerene A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecule consists of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to seven atoms. The molecule may be a hollow sphere, ...

– any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Fullerene spheres and tubes have applications in nanotechnology. *

Allotropes of carbon Carbon is capable of forming many allotropes (structurally different forms of the same element) due to its valency. Well-known forms of carbon include diamond and graphite. In recent decades, many more allotropes have been discovered and res ...

– *

Aggregated diamond nanorods Aggregated diamond nanorods, or ADNRs, are a nanocrystalline form of diamond, also known as nanodiamond or hyperdiamond. Discovery Nanodiamond or hyperdiamond was produced by compression of graphite in 2003 by a group of researchers in Ja ...

– *

Buckypaper Buckypaper is a thin sheet made from an aggregate of carbon nanotubes or carbon nanotube grid paper. The nanotubes are approximately 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Originally, it was fabricated as a way to handle carbon nanotubes, but i ...

– *

Carbon nanofoam Carbon nanofoam is an allotrope of carbon discovered in 1997 by Andrei V. Rode and co-workers at the Australian National University in Canberra. It consists of a cluster-assembly of carbon atoms strung together in a loose three-dimensional web. The ...

– *

Carbon nanotube A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers. ''Single-wall carbon nan ...

– ** Nanoknot – **

Nanotube membrane Nanotube membranes are either a single, open-ended nanotube(CNT) or a film composed of an array of nanotubes that are oriented perpendicularly to the surface of an impermeable film matrix like the cells of a honeycomb. 'Impermeable' is essential ...

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Fullerene chemistry Fullerene chemistry is a field of organic chemistry devoted to the chemical properties of fullerenes. Research in this field is driven by the need to functionalize fullerenes and tune their properties. For example, fullerene is notoriously insolub ...

– **

Bingel reaction The Bingel reaction in fullerene chemistry is a fullerene cyclopropanation reaction to a methanofullerene first discovered by C. Bingel in 1993 with the bromo derivative of diethyl malonate in the presence of a base such as sodium hydride or ...

– ** Endohedral hydrogen fullerene – ** Prato reaction – * Endohedral fullerenes – * Fullerite – *

Graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

– **

Graphene nanoribbon Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs, also called nano-graphene ribbons or nano-graphite ribbons) are strips of graphene with width less than 100 nm. Graphene ribbons were introduced as a theoretical model by Mitsutaka Fujita and coauthors to examine ...

– *

Potential applications of carbon nanotubes Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are cylinders of one or more layers of graphene (lattice). Diameters of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) are typically 0.8 to 2 nm and 5 to 20 nm, respectively, alth ...

– *

Timeline of carbon nanotubes __NOTOC__ 1952 * Radushkevich and Lukyanovich publish a paper in the Soviet ''Journal of Physical Chemistry'' showing hollow graphitic carbon fibers that are 50 nanometers in diameter. 1955 * Hofer, Sterling and McCarney observe a growth o ...

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Nanoparticles and colloids

Nanoparticle A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is usually defined as a particle of matter that is between 1 and 100 nanometres (nm) in diameter. The term is sometimes used for larger particles, up to 500 nm, or fibers and tubes that are less than 10 ...

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Ceramics processing Ceramic engineering is the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done either by the action of heat, or at lower temperatures using precipitation reactions from high-purity chemical solutions ...

– *

Colloid A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a liquid, while others exten ...

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Colloidal crystal A colloidal crystal is an ordered array of colloid particles and fine grained materials analogous to a standard crystal whose repeating subunits are atoms or molecules. A natural example of this phenomenon can be found in the gem opal, where sphere ...

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Diamondoids In chemistry, diamondoids are variants of the carbon cage molecule known as adamantane (C10H16), the smallest unit cage structure of the diamond crystal lattice. Diamondoids also known as nanodiamonds or condensed adamantanes may include one or more ...

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Nanocomposite Nanocomposite is a multiphase solid material where one of the phases has one, two or three dimensions of less than 100 nanometers (nm) or structures having nano-scale repeat distances between the different phases that make up the material. The i ...

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Nanocrystal A ''nanocrystal'' is a material particle having at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres, based on quantum dots (a nanoparticle) and composed of atoms in either a single- or poly-crystalline arrangement. The size of nanocrystals disti ...

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Nanostructure A nanostructure is a structure of intermediate size between microscopic and molecular structures. Nanostructural detail is microstructure at nanoscale. In describing nanostructures, it is necessary to differentiate between the number of di ...

– **

Nanocages Gold Nanocages are hollow, porous gold nanoparticles ranging in size from 10 to over 150 nm. They are created by reacting silver nanoparticles with chloroauric acid (hydrogen, HGold, Auchlorine, Cl4) in boiling water. Whereas gold nanoparticle ...

– **

Nanofabrics Nanofabrics are textiles engineered with small particles that give ordinary materials advantageous properties such as superhydrophobicity (extreme water resistance, also see " Lotus effect"), odor and moisture elimination, increased elasticity an ...

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Nanofiber Nanofibers are fibers with diameters in the nanometer range (typically, between 1 nm and 1 μm). Nanofibers can be generated from different polymers and hence have different physical properties and application potentials. Examples of natural polyme ...

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Nanofoam Nanofoams are a class of nanostructured, porous materials (foams) containing a significant population of pores with diameters less than 100 nm. Aerogels are one example of nanofoam. Metal Overview Metallic nanofoams are a subcategorization ...

– ** Nanoknot – ** Nanomesh – **

Nanopillar Nanopillars is an emerging technology within the field of nanostructures. Nanopillars are pillar shaped nanostructures approximately 10 nanometers in diameter that can be grouped together in lattice like arrays. They are a type of metamaterial, whi ...

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Nanopin film Nanopin film is an experimental material in nanotechnology developed in 2005 with unusual superhydrophobic properties . A droplet of water makes contact with the surface of this film and forms an almost perfect sphere with a contact angle of 178 °. ...

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Nanoring A nanoring is a cyclic nanostructure with a thickness small enough to be on the nanoscale (10−9 meters). Note that this definition allows the diameter of the ring to be larger than the nanoscale. Nanorings are a relatively recent development withi ...

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Nanorod In nanotechnology, nanorods are one morphology of nanoscale objects. Each of their dimensions range from 1–100 nm. They may be synthesized from metals or semiconducting materials. Standard aspect ratios (length divided by width) are 3-5. Na ...

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Nanoshell A nanoshell, or rather a nanoshell plasmon, is a type of spherical nanoparticle consisting of a dielectric core which is covered by a thin metallic shell (usually gold). These nanoshells involve a quasiparticle called a plasmon which is a collec ...

– **

Nanotube A nanotube is a nanometer-scale hollow tube-like structure. Kinds of nanotubes * BCN nanotube, composed of comparable amounts of boron, carbon, and nitrogen atoms * Boron nitride nanotube, a polymorph of boron nitride * Carbon nanotube, includes ...

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Quantum dot Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor particles a few nanometres in size, having optical and electronic properties that differ from those of larger particles as a result of quantum mechanics. They are a central topic in nanotechnology. When the q ...

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Quantum heterostructure A quantum heterostructure is a heterostructure in a substrate (usually a semiconductor material), where size restricts the movements of the charge carriers forcing them into a quantum confinement. This leads to the formation of a set of discrete ...

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Sculptured thin film Sculptured thin films (STFs) are nanostructured materials with unidirectionally varying properties that can be designed and realized in a controllable manner using variants of physical vapor deposition. The ability to virtually instantaneously cha ...

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Nanomedicine

Nanomedicine Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. Nanomedicine ranges from the medical applications of nanomaterials and biological devices, to nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotec ...

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Lab-on-a-chip A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) is a device that integrates one or several laboratory functions on a single integrated circuit (commonly called a "chip") of only millimeters to a few square centimeters to achieve automation and high-throughput screening. ...

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Nanosensor Nanosensors are nanoscale devices that measure physical quantities and convert these to signals that can be detected and analyzed. There are several ways proposed today to make nanosensors; these include top-down lithography, bottom-up assembly, ...

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Nanotoxicology Nanotoxicology is the study of the toxicity of nanomaterials. Because of quantum size effects and large surface area to volume ratio, nanomaterials have unique properties compared with their larger counterparts that affect their toxicity. Of th ...

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Molecular self-assembly

Molecular self-assembly In chemistry and materials science, molecular self-assembly is the process by which molecules adopt a defined arrangement without guidance or management from an outside source. There are two types of self-assembly: intramolecular and intermo ...

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DNA nanotechnology DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of geneti ...

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DNA computing DNA computing is an emerging branch of unconventional computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional electronic computing. Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, a ...

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DNA machine A DNA machine is a molecular machine constructed from DNA. Research into DNA machines was pioneered in the late 1980s by Nadrian Seeman and co-workers from New York University. DNA is used because of the numerous biological tools already found in ...

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DNA origami DNA origami is the nanoscale folding of DNA to create arbitrary two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale. The specificity of the interactions between complementary base pairs make DNA a useful construction material, through design of ...

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Self-assembled monolayer Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of organic molecules are molecular assemblies formed spontaneously on surfaces by adsorption and are organized into more or less large ordered domains. In some cases molecules that form the monolayer do not interact ...

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Supramolecular assembly In chemistry, a supramolecular assembly is a complex of molecules held together by noncovalent bonds. While a supramolecular assembly can be simply composed of two molecules (e.g., a DNA double helix or an inclusion compound), or a defined nu ...

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Nanoelectronics

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Break junction A break junction is an electronic device which consists of two metal wires separated by a very thin gap, on the order of the inter-atomic spacing (less than a nanometer). This can be done by physically pulling the wires apart or through chemical etc ...

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Chemical vapor deposition Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a vacuum deposition method used to produce high quality, and high-performance, solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. In typical CVD, the wafer (subst ...

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Microelectromechanical systems Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, ...

(MEMS) *

Nanocircuits Nanocircuits are electrical circuits operating on the nanometer scale. This is well into the quantum realm, where quantum mechanical effects become very important. One nanometer is equal to 10−9 meters or a row of 10 hydrogen atoms. With suc ...

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Nanocomputer Nanocomputer refers to a computer smaller than the microcomputer, which is smaller than the minicomputer. Microelectronic components that are at the core of all modern electronic devices employ semiconductor transistors. The term nanocomputer is ...

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Nanoelectromechanical systems Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are a class of devices integrating electrical and mechanical functionality on the nanoscale. NEMS form the next logical miniaturization step from so-called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS devices. NEM ...

(NEMS) *

Surface micromachining Surface micromachining builds microstructures by deposition and etching structural layers over a substrate. This is different from Bulk micromachining, in which a silicon substrate wafer is selectively etched to produce structures. Layers G ...

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Nanoelectromechanical relay A nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relay is an electrically actuated switch that is built on the nanometer scale using semiconductor fabrication techniques. They are designed to operate in replacement of, or in conjunction with, traditional semiconduc ...

Molecular electronics

Molecular electronics Molecular electronics is the study and application of molecular building blocks for the fabrication of electronic components. It is an interdisciplinary area that spans physics, chemistry, and materials science. The unifying feature is use of m ...

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Nanolithography

Nanolithography Nanolithography (NL) is a growing field of techniques within nanotechnology dealing with the engineering (patterning e.g. etching, depositing, writing, printing etc) of nanometer-scale structures on various materials. The modern term reflects on a ...

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Electron beam lithography Electron-beam lithography (often abbreviated as e-beam lithography, EBL) is the practice of scanning a focused beam of electrons to draw custom shapes on a surface covered with an electron-sensitive film called a resist (exposing). The electron ...

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Ion-beam sculpting Ion-Beam sculpting is a two-step process to make solid-state nanopores. The term itself was coined by Golovchenko and co-workers at Harvard in the paper "Ion-beam sculpting at nanometer length scales." In the process, solid-state nanopores are fo ...

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Nanoimprint lithography Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is a method of fabricating nanometer scale patterns. It is a simple nanolithography process with low cost, high throughput and high resolution. It creates patterns by mechanical deformation of imprint resist and subse ...

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Photolithography In integrated circuit manufacturing, photolithography or optical lithography is a general term used for techniques that use light to produce minutely patterned thin films of suitable materials over a substrate, such as a silicon wafer (electroni ...

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Scanning probe lithography Scanning probe lithography (SPL) describes a set of nanolithographic methods to pattern material on the nanoscale using scanning probes. It is a direct-write, mask-less approach which bypasses the diffraction limit and can reach resolutions bel ...

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– * IBM Millipede –

Molecular nanotechnology

Molecular nanotechnology Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is a technology based on the ability to build structures to complex, atomic specifications by means of mechanosynthesis. This is distinct from nanoscale materials. Based on Richard Feynman's vision of miniatur ...

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Grey goo Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass on Earth while building many more of themselves, a scen ...

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Mechanosynthesis Mechanosynthesis is a term for hypothetical chemical syntheses in which reaction outcomes are determined by the use of mechanical constraints to direct reactive molecules to specific molecular sites. There are presently no non-biological chemica ...

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Molecular assembler A molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a "proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision". A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecu ...

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Molecular modelling Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials scie ...

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Nanorobotics Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...

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Smartdust Smartdust is a system of many tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such as sensors, robots, or other devices, that can detect, for example, light, temperature, vibration, magnetism, or chemicals. They are usually operated on a computer networ ...

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Utility fog Utility fog (also referred to as foglets) is a hypothetical collection of tiny nanobots that can replicate a physical structure.Nanochondria – *

Programmable matter Programmable matter is matter which has the ability to change its physical properties (shape, density, moduli, conductivity, optical properties, etc.) in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing. Programmable matter is ...

– * Self reconfigurable – *

Self-replication Self-replication is any behavior of a dynamical system that yields construction of an identical or similar copy of itself. Biological cells, given suitable environments, reproduce by cell division. During cell division, DNA is replicated and c ...

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Devices

Micromachinery Micromachines are mechanical objects that are fabricated in the same general manner as integrated circuits. They are generally considered to be between 100 nanometres to 100 micrometres in size, though that is debatable. The applications of ...

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Nano-abacus The nano-abacus is a nano-sized abacus developed by IBM scientists. Stable rows made up of ten molecules act as the railings of the abacus. The beads are made up of fullerenes and are pushed around by the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope ...

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Nanomotor A nanomotor is a molecular or nanoscale device capable of converting energy into movement. It can typically generate forces on the order of piconewtons. While nanoparticles have been utilized by artists for centuries, such as in the famous Lycur ...

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Nanopore A nanopore is a pore of nanometer size. It may, for example, be created by a pore-forming protein or as a hole in synthetic materials such as silicon or graphene. When a nanopore is present in an electrically insulating membrane, it can be used as ...

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Nanopore sequencing Nanopore sequencing is a third generation approach used in the sequencing of biopolymers — specifically, polynucleotides in the form of DNA or RNA. Using nanopore sequencing, a single molecule of DNA or RNA can be sequenced without the need ...

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Quantum point contact A quantum point contact (QPC) is a narrow constriction between two wide electrically conducting regions, of a width comparable to the electronic wavelength (nano- to micrometer). The importance of QPC lies in the fact that they prove quantisation of ...

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Synthetic molecular motors Synthetic molecular motors are molecular machines capable of continuous directional rotation under an energy input. Although the term "molecular motor" has traditionally referred to a naturally occurring protein that induces motion (via protein d ...

– * Carbon nanotube actuators –

Microscopes and other devices

Microscopy Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of mi ...

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Atomic force microscope Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the opt ...

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Scanning tunneling microscope A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...

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Scanning probe microscope Scan may refer to: Acronyms * Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN), a psychiatric diagnostic tool developed by WHO * Shared Check Authorization Network (SCAN), a database of bad check writers and collection agency for bad ...

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Sarfus Sarfus is an optical quantitative imaging technique based on the association of: *an upright or inverted optical microscope in crossed polarization configuration and *specific supporting plates – called surfs – on which the sample to observe i ...

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Notable organizations in nanotechnology

List of nanotechnology organizations This is a list of organizations involved in nanotechnology. Government Brazil * Brazilian Nanotechnology National Laboratory China * National Center for Nanoscience and Technology Canada * National Institute for Nanotechnology * Waterl ...

Government

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...

(US) *

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U ...

(US) *

National Nanotechnology Initiative The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is a research and development initiative which provides a framework to coordinate nanoscale research and resources among United States federal government agencies and departments. History Mihail C. ...

(US) *

Russian Nanotechnology Corporation Rusnano Group (russian: Роснано АО, lit=Rosnano plc.) is a Russian state-established and funded company. The Rusnano Group's mission is to create competitive nanotechnology-based industry in Russia. Rusnano invests directly and through i ...

(RU) *

Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/ European Commission to support and foster research in the Euro ...

(EU)

Advocacy and information groups

American Chemistry Council American Chemistry Council (ACC), formerly known as the Manufacturing Chemists' Association (at its founding in 1872) and then as the Chemical Manufacturers' Association (from 1978 until 2000), is an industry trade association for American chemic ...

(US) *

American Nano Society American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

(US) *

Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

(US) *

Foresight Institute The Foresight Institute (Foresight) is a San Francisco-based research non-profit that promotes the development of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies, such as safe AGI, biotech and longevity. Foresight runs four cross-disciplinary ...

(US) * Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (global)

Manufacturers

* Cerion Nanomaterials, Metal / Metal Oxide / Ceramic Nanoparticles (US) * OCSiAl, Carbon Nanotubes (Luxembourg)

Notable figures in nanotechnology

Phaedon Avouris Phaedon Avouris ( el, Φαίδων Αβούρης; born 1945) is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Resea ...

- first electronic devices made out of

carbon nanotubes A scanning tunneling microscopy image of a single-walled carbon nanotube Rotating single-walled zigzag carbon nanotube A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with diameters typically measured in nanometers. ''Single-wall carbon nan ...

Gerd Binnig Gerd Binnig (; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. Early life and education Binnig w ...

- co-inventor of the

scanning tunneling microscope A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...

Heinrich Rohrer Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst ...

- co-inventor of the

Vicki Colvin
Director for th
Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, Rice University
*

Eric Drexler Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is an American engineer best known for studies of the potential of molecular nanotechnology (MNT), from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and ...

- was the first to theorise about nanotechnology in depth and popularised the subject *

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superf ...

- gave the first mention of some of the distinguishing concepts in a 1959 talk *

Robert Freitas Robert A. Freitas Jr. (born 1952) is an American nanotechnologist. Career In 1974, Freitas earned a bachelor's degree in both physics and psychology from Harvey Mudd College, and in 1978, he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Santa Clara ...

- nanomedicine theorist *

Andre Geim , birth_date = , birth_place = Sochi, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union , death_date = , death_place = , workplaces = , nationality = Dutch and British , fields = Condensed matter physics ...

- Discoverer of 2-D carbon film called

graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

Sumio Iijima is a Japanese physicist and inventor, often cited as the inventor of carbon nanotubes. Although carbon nanotubes had been observed prior to his "invention", Iijima's 1991 paper generated unprecedented interest in the carbon nanostructures and ...

- discoverer of

carbon nanotube A scanning tunn