Fields
Nanotechnology
Also Known As Nanotech
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Nanotechnology is the engineering of matter at the scale of roughly one to one hundred nanometers, where materials often behave differently than they do in bulk, and where individual atoms and molecules can in principle be imaged, measured and arranged directly. Its conceptual origin is usually traced to physicist Richard Feynman's 29 December 1959 lecture There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, given at Caltech, in which he argued there was no physical law preventing the direct manipulation of individual atoms and offered prizes for early steps toward it, though Feynman never used the word nanotechnology itself and the talk went largely unnoticed for two decades. The term was coined in 1974 by Tokyo Science University professor Norio Taniguchi, who used nano-technology to describe ultra-precision machining capable of controlling material at the level of a single atom or molecule, a usage rooted in conventional manufacturing rather than in Feynman's speculative vision. The field's modern popular identity instead grew mainly from engineer K. Eric Drexler, who arrived at the term independently in a 1981 paper and popularized a far more ambitious molecular nanotechnology, built around self-replicating molecular assemblers, in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich in 1981 gave the field its founding instrument, letting researchers not only image but directly reposition individual atoms, demonstrated in 1990 when IBM Almaden scientists arranged 35 xenon atoms into the company's logo. Real applications since have run from nanomedicine, including Doxil, a nanoparticle-encapsulated chemotherapy drug and the first nanotechnology-based medicine approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, in November 1995, to carbon nanotubes, nanoscale coatings and the sub-100-nanometer transistor features of modern semiconductor manufacturing.
Facts
Disputed
Origin YearDated here to Norio Taniguchi's 1974 paper, the first documented use of the word nanotechnology itself. Richard Feynman's 1959 lecture supplied the field's conceptual framing fifteen years earlier without using the term, and the field's modern popular identity and research agenda trace at least as strongly to K. Eric Drexler's independent 1981 coinage and 1986 book Engines of Creation as to Taniguchi's manufacturing-oriented usage; historians of science do not treat any single one of these three moments as settling when the field itself began. Core ConcernUnderstanding, imaging and directly manipulating matter at the scale of individual atoms and molecules, and engineering materials and devices whose function depends on that nanoscale structure. 1 Core PrincipleSourced to the subject's own accountProperties that do not exist in a bulk material can emerge once that material is engineered at the nanoscale, so the field works with quantum and surface effects that would be negligible at any larger size rather than designing around them. 2 Learn More
Feynman's Room at the Bottom
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On 29 December 1959, the physicist Richard Feynman gave an after-dinner talk at Caltech titled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, arguing that no law of physics forbade manipulating individual atoms directly, and offering cash prizes to anyone who could build a working electric motor smaller than a fraction of an inch or write a page of text small enough to fit on the head of a pin. Feynman never used the word nanotechnology, and the talk was barely noticed for the next two decades; it entered the field's own origin story only in retrospect, once other researchers had independently arrived at the questions Feynman had raised for fun. What makes the lecture worth reading now is not that it predicted the field correctly in every detail, but that it correctly identified the one thing every later researcher would need to believe before starting: that the smallness of an atom was not, by itself, a reason nobody could ever build with them.
From Ultra-Precision Machining to Self-Replicating Assemblers
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The word nanotechnology itself has two separate parents who never met. Norio Taniguchi, a professor at Tokyo Science University, coined nano-technology in 1974 to describe ultra-precision machining capable of controlling a material down to the level of a single atom or molecule, a usage grounded firmly in conventional manufacturing. K. Eric Drexler arrived at the same term independently in a 1981 paper, then popularized a far more ambitious idea in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: molecular nanotechnology built around self-replicating molecular assemblers, a vision closer to Feynman's speculative 1959 talk than to Taniguchi's machine shop. The same year Drexler's independent paper appeared, 1981, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich built the scanning tunneling microscope, the instrument that gave the field its eyes and hands at once: it could image individual atoms and, as IBM Almaden researchers demonstrated in 1990 by arranging 35 xenon atoms into the company's own logo, reposition them one at a time. The applications that followed favored Taniguchi's precision-manufacturing sense of the word over Drexler's assemblers: nanoscale transistor features in ordinary computer chips, carbon nanotubes, nanoscale coatings, and, in November 1995, Doxil, a nanoparticle-encapsulated chemotherapy drug and the first nanotechnology-based medicine the United States Food and Drug Administration ever approved.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Graphene, Materials Graphene is a single atomic layer material studied and engineered at the nanoscale.
Silicon, Materials Semiconductor nanofabrication of silicon devices is one of the field's founding applications.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
2. There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (Feynman, 1959 lecture)
Lecture delivered 29 December 1959, American Physical Society meeting, CaltechQuote, Lecture delivered 29 December 1959, American Physical Society meeting, Caltech
What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Smalley rejected the feasibility of Drexler's central vision of molecular nanotechnology, self-replicating molecular assemblers that build objects atom by atom. In a 2001 Scientific American piece and again in the 2003 Chemical and Engineering News Point-Counterpoint exchange with Drexler, Smalley argued that any manipulator small enough to place individual atoms would run into what he called the fat fingers and sticky fingers problems: the manipulating tips would themselves be too bulky to work in so small a space, and the atoms being positioned would bind irreversibly to the manipulator itself. Smalley held that chemistry, not merely engineering difficulty, ruled out Drexler's assemblers as described, a position Drexler and other nanotechnology researchers have disputed.
A dissenting reading, from Richard Smalley, 1996 Nobel Laureate in ChemistryThe Drexler-Smalley Debate on Molecular Nanotechnology (Chemical and Engineering News, 1 December 2003), Chemical and Engineering News
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