It is the technology of making new materials and gadgets at the smallest possible scale. The nanoscale is derived from nanometre that is one- millionth of the familiar millimetre. With new technology this suddenly seems enough to stretch around the earth a million times.
Richard Feynman in his speech There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959), proposed that mechanical systems could direct chemical reaction building atomically precise products. Such molecular assmeblers could digitally control structure of matter, in a way, a process of molecular manufacturing.
It has application in every conceivable area of science and technology that can revolutionise the various ways we look at things like curing of diseases, tissue related engineering, creation of bio computers etc. Scientists have even envisioned tiny robots being injected into the arteries who would travel through human circulatory system and clean the arterial blockages, repair damaged tissues, and destroy cancerous cells.
Nanotechnologists manipulate atoms or molecules to exploit the electrical, physical and chemical properties of matter. By controlling particle size, it is possible to make superplastic ceramics that stretch like chewing gum or liquids that are magnetic. In this context it may be said that animals, birds etc. are master nanotechnologists who can feel for things dangerous or otherwise from a very distant place.
Nanotechnology is not so much ‘technology’ as enabling technology that manifests in everything from computer chips to sensors in medicine. It is multi-disciplinary field of research involving concepts, techniques and applications in various different disciplines of science and technology.
This technology now yields remarkable products like single-molecule transistors, enzyme-powered bio- molecular motors with propellers and tiny submarines that carry chemicals from the blood to fight tumours. It is likely to radically alter the efficiency of almost anything that one can think of- computers, electronics, polymers, fuell cells, paints or batteries and likely to help produce light but strong enough material for economic space travel. Nanotechnology is an expanding technology with unlimited potential to cover all fields which only future can unfold.