ABSTRACT
On December 29, 1959, in an after-dinner speech at a conference in Pasadena, California, Richard Feynman famously quipped, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” He thus presented a bold and enduring vision of a technological journey leading toward the atomic scale and toward the ultimate boundaries set by physical laws. The world has moved closer to what Feynman had visualized and the journey still continues. Scientists and engineers are primarily striving to create materials, gain fundamental insights into their properties, and use the nanoscale materials as components or building blocks to create novel structures or devices. 1,2 At nano length scales (1–100 nm), materials show unique properties and functions. However, in certain cases, the length scales for these novel properties may be under 1 nm (down to 0.1 nm for atomic and molecular manipulation) or over 100 nm (up to 300 nm in case of nanopolymers and nanocomposites). 3,4 Nanomaterials are also referred to as a convergent technology in which the boundaries separating discrete disciplines become blurred. Biochemists, materials scientists, electrical engineers, and molecular biologists may all be considered experts in the field if they are involved in the development of nanosized structures. 5,6
