Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Nanoscience and nanotechnology is the unit's first frontier: the study and engineering of structures and materials on the scale of nanometres ($1\,\text{nm}=10^{-9}\,\text{m}$), a size range where matter's mechanical, electrical, optical and magnetic properties can differ strikingly from the same substance in bulk form. This section works through what nanoscience and nanotechnology actually mean, how the field draws on several older disciplines at once, examples of nanoscale structures that already exist in nature, a brief history of h …