9. A Brief Overview of Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology has emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century with the development of new enabling technologies for imaging, manipulating, and simulating matter at the atomic scale. The frontier of nanotechnology research and development encompasses a broad range of science and engineering activities directed toward understanding and creating improved materials, devices, and systems that can exploit the properties of matter emerging at the nanoscale. The results promise benefits that can shift paradigms in biomedicine (e.g., imaging, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention); energy (e.g., conversion and storage); electronics (e.g., computing and displays); manufacturing; environmental remediation; and many other categories of products and applications.