Nanotechnology is the manipulation or self-assembly of individual atoms, molecules, or molecular clusters into structures to create materials and devices with new or vastly different properties. Nanotechnology can work from the top down (which means reducing the size of the smallest structures to the nanoscale e.g. photonics applications in nanoelectronics and nanoengineering) or the bottom up (which involves manipulating individual atoms and molecules into nanostructures and more closely resembles chemistry or biology). The definition of nanotechnology is based on the prefix “nano” which is from the Greek word meaning “dwarf”. In more technical terms, the word “nano” means 10-9 , or one billionth of something. For comparison, a virus is roughly 100 nanometres (nm) in size. The word nanotechnology is generally used when referring to materials with the size of 0.1 to 100 nanometres, however it is also inherent that these materials should display different properties from bulk (or micrometric and larger) materials as a result of their size. These differences include physical strength, chemical reactivity, electrical conductance, magnetism, and optical effects.
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