nanoscience and nanotechnology

Nanoscience, nanotechnology, or nanotech, are all used to describe the same dynamic new field of applied science. Simply put, nanotechnology is the study and development of components measuring 100 nanometers (one billionth of a meter) or less. At these dimensions, matter begins to exhibit different characteristics. Aluminum explodes on contact with the air. Carbon can become a one-dimensional material, and conduct electricity better than copper.

The concept of nanoscience was first broached by Dr. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who helped develop the atom bomb and did much to make physics popularly comprehensible through a series of lectures and books. In a 1959 speech that speculated on the immense potential of a conflux between biology and manufacturing, Dr. Feynman described the intricacy with which biological cells manufacture substances in natural bodies, and challenged his audience to “consider the possibility that we, too, can make a thing very small, which does what we want—that we can manufacture an object that maneuvers at that level.”

The actual word “nanotechnology” was coined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in 1974, to describe the manufacture of materials with at the level of a billionth of a meter. The term was popularized by controversial researcher Dr. K. Eric Drexler in a book that proposed the idea of manufacturing an “assembler” of nanoscale matter.

The applications of nanotechnology have been both expansive and prosaic. The implications, however, are still under scrutiny. While it is exciting to see products of startling efficiency and low cost result from this technology, and to speculate on the near possibility of cures for cancer, further research is essential to development this emergent technology in its most beneficial form possible.