Nanotechnology: Shaping the World Atom by Atom

Nanotechnology comprises technological developments on the nanometer scale, usually 0.1 to 100 nm. (One nanometer equals one thousandth of a micrometer or one millionth of a millimeter.) The term has sometimes been applied to microscopic technology. This article discusses nanotechnology, nanoscience and conjectured "molecular nanotechnology."

The term nanotechnology is sometimes conflated with molecular nanotechnology (also known as "MNT"), a conjectural advanced form of nanotechnology believed by some to be achievable at some point in the future, based on productive nanosystems. Molecular nanotechnology would fabricate precise structures using mechanosynthesis to perform molecular manufacturing.

Nanotechnology includes the many techniques used to create structures at a size scale below 100 nm, including those used for fabrication of nanotubes and nanowires, those used in semiconductor fabrication such as deep ultraviolet lithography, electron beam lithography, focused ion beam machining, atomic layer deposition, and molecular vapor deposition, and further including molecular self-assembly techniques such as those employing di-block polymers.

The term “nanoscience” is used to describe the interdisciplinary fields of science devoted to the study of nanoscale phenomena employed in nanotechnology. This is the world of atoms, molecules, macromolecules, quantum dots, and macromolecular assemblies, and is dominated by surface effects such as

History

Around 450 B.C. the Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus proposed the idea of atoms. Democritus described a thought experiment in which a piece of copper would be divided in half, then divided in half again and again until an indivisible piece of copper was left. The indivisible piece was named an atom.

The first discussion of nanotechnology (not yet using that term) occurred in a talk given by Richard Feynman in 1959, entitled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Feynman suggested that it should be possible to manipulate atoms and molecules directly, an idea which was later realized by the use of the scanning tunneling microscope and the atomic force microscope. Feynman also suggested that it should be possible, in principle, to do chemical synthesis by mechanical manipulation, and he presented the "weird possibility" of building a tiny, surgical robot.

The term Nanotechnology was coined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in 1974 to describe the precision manufacture of materials with nanometre tolerances. In the 1980s the term was unknowingly appropriated by K. Eric Drexler to describe what later became known as molecular nanotechnology. Drexler took the Feynman concept of a billion tiny factories and added the idea that they could make more copies of themselves, via computer control instead of control by a human operator.

In 2005, a computer-animated short film of the nanofactory concept was produced by John Burch, in collaboration with Drexler.