Nanoscience and Technology

Nanoscience and technology are a discipline of science that explores and tries to manipulate matter at the atomic, molecular, and supramolecular levels (the nanometer scale). Quantum mechanical and surface boundary effects become relevant at such length scales, giving features on materials that aren't visible at larger, macroscopic length scales. Nanoscale science and technology, sometimes known as "nanoscience" or "nanotechnology" is a branch of science and engineering that is enabled by our relatively new capability to alter and analyze matter at the level of single atoms and small groups of atoms. Many breakthroughs in the last two decades of the twentieth century contributed to this possibility, including scientific instrument inventions such as the scanning tunneling microscope. Scientists and engineers have started regulating the structure and properties of materials and systems on a scale of 10⁹ meters, or 1/100,000 the width of a human hair, using such technologies.