Nanoparticles – Definitions

Abstract

The prefix nano has its origin in the Greek and Roman terms nannos/nanus, which describe dwarfs or dwarf-like stages of living organisms respectively similarly sized non-living structures, which of course at the time of their origin had been visible by help of naked eyes. The invention, ameliorations and use of light microscopes (e.g. Antony van Leeuwenhoek; 1632–1723) opened insights in the world of tiny structures, which were later enormously deepened by help of peculiar microscopes. Thus Ernst Ruska (1906–1988) invented 1931 the transmission electron microscope (honored by the Nobel Prize in 1986), Manfred von Ardenne (1907–1997) developed the scanning electron microscope in 1937 and finally Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer developed the so-called scanning tunneling microscope and were also honored by the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1986 (von Ardenne 1938a, b; Binnig et al. 1982a, b; Ruska 1987; Ruska and Knoll 1931; Knoll and Ruska 1932; Goldstein et al. 2003). These and several other new microscopical technologies (Table 1.1) made it possible to discover, to describe and to use a broad range of new very tiny structures of only a few nanometers in size, which at first were named as “ultrafine particles” (Granqvist et al. 1976; Hayashi et al. 1997).