NANO TECHNOLOGY

NANO TECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing area of Science and Technology. It will find many applications in many sectors. The Internet carries a plethora of articles describing these possibilities.By introducing nanotechnology, many materials and improved products can be created which rely on a change in the physical properties when the feature sizes are shrunk.Nanoparticles take advantage of their dramatically increased surface area to volume ratio. This can give a significant increase in chemical reaction speed, generating major improvements in areas such as rocket propellants.

OR IN OTHER WORDS

NANO TECHNOLOGY is the study of the controlling of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller in at least one dimension, and involves developing materials or devices within that size. Nanotechnology is very diverse, ranging from extensions of conventional device physics to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, from developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale to investigating whether we can directly control matter on the atomic scale.

Nanotechnology time line

What makes nanotechnology possible?

Nano-scale stuff has always been around us. What is different now is our ability to examine and even work with material at this scale with increasing ease. There are a number of important technologies that have come together to allow us to do this, but perhaps the most influential was the invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM in 1981.

Incremental nanotechnology — rebranding science

A lot of things we have been using for hundreds of years gain important properties as a result of their scale. Some things just happen to be of this size range, while others need to be this size to work. Being able to take control of structure at the nano-scale adds a new dimension to existing materials...

Evolutionary nanotechnology — top down design

When we want more in a smaller package, component size must be reduced, and this increasingly involves working with components at the nano-scale. Modern chip manufacturers routinely mass-produce memory and processor units in silicon with design features as small as 45nm, and these features are going to get smaller yet...

Radical nanotechnology — dreams and nightmares

What might nanotechnology lead to? The ability to manufacture products for free, artificial life, immortality and Armageddon have all been claimed as natural consequences of a mature nanotechnology.

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