Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. Potential risks of nanotechnology can broadly be grouped into four areas: the risk of environmental damage from nanoparticles and nanomaterials the risk posed by molecular manufacturing (or advanced nanotechnology) societal risks health risks Nanoethics concerns the ethical and social issues associated with developments in nanotechnology, a science which encompass several... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... This is a list of organizations involved in nanotechnology. ... This is a list of references and appearances of Nanotechnology in works of fiction. ... This page aims to list all topics related to the field of nanotechnology. ... Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. ... An example of a molecular self-assembly through hydrogen bonds reported by Meijer and coworkers in Angew. ... Molecular electronics (sometimes called moletronics) is a branch of applied physics which aims at using molecules as passive (e. ... Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a branch of microscopy that forms images of surfaces using a physical probe that scans the specimen. ... Nanolithography — or lithography at the nanometer scale — refers to the fabrication of nanometer-scale structures, meaning patterns with at least one lateral dimension between the size of an individual atom and approximately 100 nm. ... Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is the concept of engineering functional mechanical systems at the molecular scale. ... Nanomaterials is the study of how materials behave when their dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale. ... The Icosahedral Fullerene C540 C60 and C-60 redirect here. ... 3D model of three types of single-walled carbon nanotubes. ... Nanotube membranes are films composed of open-ended nanotubes that are oriented perpendicularly to the surface of the film like the cells of a honeycomb. ... Fullerene chemistry is a field of organic chemistry devoted to the chemical properties of fullerenes [1] [2] [3]. Research in this field is driven by the need to functionalize fullerenes and tune their properties. ... Carbon nanotubes have many potential applications, here is a short list of some of the most important: // clothes: waterproof tear-resistant cloth fibers combat jackets: MIT is working on combat jackets that use carbon nanotubes as ultrastrong fibers and to monitor the condition of the wearer. ... Examples of fullerenes in popular culture are numerous. ... Timeline of carbon nanotubes: Inside a carbon nanotube 1952 Radushkevich and Lukyanovich publish a paper in the Russian Journal of Physical Chemistry showing hollow graphitic carbon fibers that are 50 nanometers in diameter. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... It has been suggested that nanopowder be merged into this article or section. ... A quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure that confines the motion of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons (bound pairs of conduction band electrons and valence band holes) in all three spatial directions. ... Colloidal gold is a suspension (or colloid) of sub-micrometre-sized particles of gold in a fluid, usually water. ... --210. ... A molecular assembler is a molecular machine capable of assembling other molecules given instructions, energy, and a supply of smaller building block molecules to work from. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with mechanochemistry. ... Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometres (10-9 metres). ... Grey goo is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all living matter on Earth while building more of themselves (a scenario known as ecophagy). ... K. Eric Drexler in 2001. ... Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology Engines of Creation (ISBN 0-385-19973-2) is a seminal molecular nanotechnology book written by K. Eric Drexler in 1986. ... Nanotechnology refers broadly to a field of applied science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, normally 1 to 100 nanometres, and the fabrication of devices within that size range. ...

Pre-Nanotechnology

Humans have unwittingly employed nanotechnology for thousands of years, for example in making steel and in vulcanizing rubber. Both of these processes rely on the properties of stochastically-formed atomic ensembles mere nanometers in size, and are distinguished from chemistry in that they don't rely on the properties of individual molecules. But the development of the body of concepts now subsumed under the term nanotechnology has been slower. Stochastic, from the Greek stochos or goal, means of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural; random. ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ...

The first mention of some of the distinguishing concepts in nanotechnology (but predating use of that name) was in 1867 by James Clerk Maxwell when he proposed as a thought experiment a tiny entity known as Maxwell's Demon able to handle individual molecules. James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. His most significant achievement was aggregating a set of equations in electricity, magnetism and inductance — eponymously named Maxwells equations — including an important modification (extension) of the Ampères... Maxwells demon is an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. ...

The first observations and size measurements of nano-particles was made during first decade of 20th century. They are mostly associated with the name of Zsigmondy who made detail study of gold sols and other nanomaterials with sizes down to 10 nm and less. He published a book in 1914. ^[1]. He used ultramicroscope that employes dark field method for seeing particles with sizes much less than light wavelength. The ultramicroscope is a system of illumination for extremely small objects such as colloidal particles, fog droplets, or smoke particles. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Wavelength (disambiguation). ...

Zsigmondy was also the first who used nanometer explicitly for characterizing particle size. He determined it as 1/1,000,000 of millimeter. He developed a first system classification based on particle size in nanometer range. A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter), symbol mm is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ...

There have been many significant developments during 20th century in characterizing nanomaterials and related phenomena. Scientific discipline dedicated to this subject is Interface and Colloid Science Here are some of these landmarks. Interface and Colloid Science deals with heterogeneous systems. ...

In the 1920s, Irving Langmuir and Katharine B. Blodgett introduced the concept of a monolayer, a layer of material one molecule thick. Langmuir won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work. Irving Langmuir (January 31, 1881 in Brooklyn, New York - August 16, 1957 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts) was an American chemist and physicist. ... // Katharine Blodgett was named the first woman to ever get her Ph. ... A monolayer is a single, closely packed layer of atoms or molecules [1]. A Langmuir monolayer is a one-molecule thick insoluble layer of an organic material spread onto an aqueous subphase. ... The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: ), as designated in Alfred Nobels will in 1895, are awarded for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. ...

In early 50th Derjaguin and Abrikosova conducted the first measurement of surfaces forces ^[2].

There have been many studies of periodic colloidal structures and principles of molecular self-assembly that are overviewed in the paper ^[3]. An example of a molecular self-assembly through hydrogen bonds reported by Meijer and coworkers in Angew. ...

There are many other discoveries that serve as scientific basis for the modern Nanotechnology can be found in the "Fundamentals of Interface and Colloid Science by H.Lyklema ^[4].

Conceptual origins

The topic of nanotechnology was again touched upon by "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction would become more important, etc. This basic idea appears feasible, and exponential assembly enhances it with parallelism to produce a useful quantity of end products. At the meeting, Feynman announced two challenges, and he offered a prize a $1000 for the first individuals to solve the each one. The first challenge involved the construction of a nanomotor, which, to Feynman's surprise, was achieved by November of 1960 by William McLellan. The second challenge involved the possibility of scaling down letters small enough so as to be able to fit the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin; this prize was claimed in 1985 by Tom Newman.^[5] In 1959, Richard Feynman gave the first talk on nanotechnology, entitled Theres Plenty of Room at the Bottom[1]. He considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms as a more powerful form of synthetic chemistry. ... This article is about the physicist. ... The American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the worlds second largest organization of physicists. ... California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... In chemistry, the term van der Waals force originally referred to all forms of intermolecular forces; however, in modern usage it tends to refer to intermolecular forces that deal with forces due to the polarization of molecules. ... Parallelism may refer to: Parallelism (philosophy) - in the philosophy of mind a theistic, dualist solution to the mind-body problem Parallelism in computing Parallelism in grammar or in rhetoric This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... A nanomotor is a molecular device capable of converting energy into movement and forces on the order of the pico-newtons. ... William McLellan (born in 1928) is a British electrical engineer. ... 1913 advertisement for the 11th edition, with the slogan When in doubt — look it up in the Encyclopædia Britannica The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with æ, the ae-ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still... Tom Newman, a graduate student at Stanford University in 1985, was one of the two people to solve one of a pair of challenges put forth by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman at the annual meeting of the Americal Physical Society in 1959. ...

In 1965 Gordon Moore observed that silicon transistors were undergoing a continual process of scaling downward, an observation which was later codified as Moore's law. Since his observation transistor minimum feature sizes have decreased from 10 micrometers to the 45-65 nm range in 2007; one minimum feature is thus roughly 180 silicon atoms long Gordon Earle Moore (b. ... Gordon Moores original graph from 1965 Growth of transistor counts for Intel processors (dots) and Moores Law (upper line=18 months; lower line=24 months) For the observation regarding information retrieval, see Mooers Law. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...

The term "nanotechnology" was first defined by Tokyo Science University, Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper (N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'Nano-Technology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974.) as follows: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule." Since that time the definition of nanotechnology has generally been extended upward in size to include features as large as 100 nm. Additionally, the idea that nanotechnology embraces structures exhibiting quantum mechanical aspects, such as quantum dots, has been thrown into the definition. Tokyo University of Science (東京理科大学 Tokyo Rika Daigaku, formerly Tokyo Science University) is the prestigious private university of science and technology in Japan. ... Professor Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo Science University invented the term nanotechnology in 1974. ... Year 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. ... Fig. ... A quantum dot is a potential well that confines electrons in three dimensions to a region of the order of the electrons de Broglie wavelength in size, a few nanometers in a semiconductor. ...

Also in 1974 the process of atomic layer deposition, for depositing uniform thin films one atomic layer at a time, was developed and patented by Dr. Tuomo Suntola and co-workers in Finland.

In the 1980s the idea of nanotechnology as deterministic, rather than stochastic, handling of individual atoms and molecules was conceptually explored in depth by Dr. K. Eric Drexler, who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and the books Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, (ISBN 0-471-57518-6). Drexler's vision of nanotechnology is often called "molecular nanotechnology" (MNT) or "molecular manufacturing," and Drexler at one point proposed the term "zettatech" which never became popular. The term deterministic may refer to: the more general notion of determinism from philosophy, see determinism a type of algorithm as discussed in computer science, see deterministic algorithm scientific determinism as used by Karl Popper and Stephen Hawking deterministic system in mathematics deterministic system in philosophy deterministic finite state machine... Stochastic, from the Greek stochos or goal, means of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural; random. ... K. Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology. ...

Experimental advances

Nanotechnology and nanoscience got a boost in the early 1980s with two major developments: the birth of cluster science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). This development led to the discovery of fullerenes in 1985 and the structural assignment of carbon nanotubes a few years later. In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor nanocrystals were studied. This led to a fast increasing number of semiconductor nanoparticles of quantum dots. A mite next to a gear chain produced using nanotechnology Nanotechnology as a collective term refers to technological developments on the nanometer scale, usually 0. ... In physics, the term clusters denotes small, multiatom particles. ... Image of reconstruction on a clean Au(100) surface. ... Buckminsterfullerene (C60) Fullerenes are molecules composed entirely of carbon, taking the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. ... An electronic device known as a diode can be formed by joining two nanoscale carbon tubes with different electronic properties. ... A nanocrystal is a crystalline material with dimensions measured in nanometers; a nanoparticle with a structure that is mostly crystalline. ... A semiconductor is a solid whose electrical conductivity is in between that of a conductor and that of an insulator, and can be controlled over a wide range, either permanently or dynamically. ... A quantum dot is a potential well that confines electrons in three dimensions to a region of the order of the electrons de Broglie wavelength in size, a few nanometers in a semiconductor. ...

In the early 1990s Huffman and Kraetschmer (U. Arizona) discovered how to synthesize and purify large quantities of fullerenes. This opened the door to their characterization and functionalization by hundreds of investigators in government and industrial laboraories. Shortly after, rubidium doped C60 was found to be a mid temperature (Tc = 32 K) superconductor. At a meeting of the Materials Research Society meeting in 1992, Dr. T. Ebbesen (NEC) described to a spellbound audience his discovery and characterization od carbon nanotubes. This event sent those in attendance and others downwind of his presentation into their laboratories to reproduce and push those discoveries forward. Using the same or similar tools as those used by Huffman and Kratschmere, hundreds of researchers further developed the field of nanotube-based nanotechnology.

At present in 2007 the practice of nanotechnology embraces both stochastic approaches (in which, for example, supramolecular chemistry creates waterproof pants) and deterministic approaches wherein single molecules (created by stochastic chemistry) are manipulated on substrate surfaces (created by stochastic deposition methods) by deterministic methods comprising nudging them with STM or AFM probes and causing simple binding or cleavage reactions to occur. The dream of a complex, deterministic molecular nanotechnology remains elusive. Since the mid 1990s, thousands of surface scientists and thin film technocrats have latched on to the nanotechnology bandwagon and redefined their disciplines as nanotechnology. This has caused much confusion in the field and has spawned thousands of "nano"-papers on the peer reviewed literature. Most of these reports are extensions of the more ordinary research done in the parent fields. Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... Supramolecular chemistry refers to the area of chemistry which focuses on the noncovalent bonding interactions of molecules. ... STM can mean: STMicroelectronics, an Italian-French manufacturer of electronics and semiconductors STM-1, Synchronous Transport Module, the basic rate of transmission of the SDH ITU-T fiber optic network transmission standard Master of Sacred Theology, a second level professional degree conferred by seminaries and theological colleges Scanning tunneling microscope... Topographic scan of a glass surface The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a very high-resolution type of scanning probe microscope, with demonstrated resolution of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the optical diffraction limit. ...

For the future, some means has to be found for MNT design evolution at the nanoscale which mimics the process of biological evolution at the molecular scale. Biological evolution proceeds by random variation in ensemble averages of organisms combined with culling of the less-successful variants and reproduction of the more-successful variants, and macroscale engineering design also proceeds by a process of design evolution from simplicity to complexity as set forth somewhat satirically by John Gall: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. . . . A complex system designed from scratch never works and can not be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a system that works." ^[6] A breakthrough in MNT is needed which proceeds from the simple atomic ensembles which can be built with, e.g., an STM to complex MNT systems via a process of design evolution. A handicap in this process is the difficulty of seeing and manipulation at the nanoscale compared to the macroscale which makes deterministic selection of successful trials difficult; in contrast biological evolution proceeds via action of what Richard Dawkins has called the "blind watchmaker" ^[7] comprising random molecular variation and deterministic reproduction/extinction. John Gall is an author and retired pediatrician. ...

References

1. ^ Zsigmondy, R. "Colloids and the Ultramicroscope", J.Wiley and Sons, NY, (1914)
2. ^ Derjaguin, B.V. Discuss. Faraday Soc., No. 18, 24-27, 182-187, 198, 211, 215-219 (1954)
3. ^ Efremov, I.F. "Periodic Colloidal Structures", in "Surface and Colloid Science", vol. 8, Wiley, NY (1975)
4. ^ Lyklema, J. "Fundamentals of Interface and Colloid Science", vol.1-5 Academic Press, (1995-2000)
5. ^ Gribbin, John. "Richard Feynman: A Life in Science" Dutton 1997, pg 170.
6. ^ Gall, John, (1986) Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail, 2nd ed. Ann Arbor, MI : The General Systemantics Press.
7. ^ Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, W. W. Norton; Reissue edition (September 19, 1996)