"Nanotechnology is the technology working with matter that is at the scale of one-billionth of a meter (1 nanometer), or 1/75,000 the size of a human hair. I define it as the precision placement, measurement, manipulation, and modeling of sub-100 nanometer scale matter, somewhere from 4 to 400 individual atoms. This range is important because when we get down to this small size, the classical laws of physics change to give us novel properties that can be harnessed and exploited. Manipulating atoms which combine to form molecules, the building blocks of our natural world, allows scientists to create new building blocks which produce new materials with the exact properties they desire: smaller, stronger, tougher, lighter, and more resilient than what has come before. It is predicted that nanotechnology will lead to incredible advances from mundane items like scratch-proof glass to precision drug delivery systems to computers the size of a sugar cube which could hold the entire Library of Congress."
Josh Wolfe
Editor, Forbes Wolfe Report
Figure 2. Comparison of a typical large-grained
polycrystalline material to PowerMetal’s nanocrystalline material
(1 μm = 1,000 nm). The micrograph shown is a High Resolution Transmission
Electron Microscope (HRTEM) image with individual atoms within the
nanocrystalline grains (or crystals) resolved.
