Nanotechnology is the scientific perfect storm. Over the past several decades, research at the nanoscale in physics, chemistry, and biology has converged to produce some extraordinary breakthroughs. In physics, the feature sizes of semiconductor devices have shrunk, in accordance with Moore’s law,1 to 22 nm for current commercial products and 5–10 nm for research devices.2 In chemistry, scientists have moved from thinking about atoms and simple molecules to studying large complexes such as proteins with hundreds of thousands of atoms. In biology, DNA, RNA, and cellular membranes exhibit a remarkable set of capabilities dominated by behavior at the nanoscale.
Nanotechnology comprises devices and structures whose small characteristic dimensions, between 1 nm and 100 nm, result in important functional differences from similar devices at larger scales. Developments of the past 20 years or so include the discovery and synthesis of new materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene, and...
