What is Nanoscience?

Nanoscience is defined as the study of phenomena and the manipulation of materials at atomic, molecular and macromolecular scales, where the properties of matter differ significantly from the properties the same substance shows at a larger (bulk) scale. The key idea packed into this definition is that nanoscience is not simply 'chemistry or physics done on very small samples' -- it specifically concerns a size regime where the ordinary bulk properties of a material (its colour, strength, melting point, reactivity, electrical behaviour and so on) genuinely change, often quite drastically, purely as a function of how small the particles have become, rather than because the underlying substance itself is chemically different. This is the foundational idea the whole chapter builds on: understanding matter at the nanoscale requires new science, not just a smaller ruler, because the …