Editorial

Abstract

Chemistry and Nanotechnology: a great partnership. Current developments in Science and Technology (S&T) are integrating many different areas of knowledge, leading to an increasing miniaturization of functional devices and systems. The modern focus of S&T is on the nanoscale, where a remarkable progress has been achieved thanks to the evolution on the molecular designing of materials and on the ability to deal with the structures at the atomic-molecular level. In fact, at the present time, the advances in materials are being determined by the capability of controlling the space distribution of the structural elements. By merging into the nanosciences, dramatic changes of paradigm are already taking place in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Electronics and Materials Science, extrapolating the limits of the classical world to enter the quantum domain of the atoms and molecules, so familiar to the Chemists. Chemistry is indeed everywhere, even in our heart and mind. Mother Nature has played Chemistry for billions of years, and learned how to choose the right species to form more organized systems, capable of self-assembling and evolving into self-replicating systems, and also performing useful work. In photosynthesis and mitochondrial respiratory chain one can find typical examples of organized processes in which the energy/electron flow matches the gradient of potentials of the biomolecules strategically distributed along the internal membranes, ensuring efficient energy conversion which sustain all the living organisms. Nature has also learned how to perform normally drastic processes under mild conditions, as exemplified by the bacterial nitrogen fixation, and to control the activity of enzymes using allosteric mechanisms, forcing them to work or to rest, as real nanomachines. Finally, Nature succeeded in using molecules to create a learning machine, which has evolved into a fantastic network of interactions, capable of performing 10 17 processes per second; a thousand times faster than the IBM Blue Gene computer, the best machine ever made by man. Such wet computing machine is, of course, the Brain! So, Nature is giving the Chemist all the clues to climb another evolutionary step. But, it will be necessary some changes of paradigm; start thinking beyond the molecules and learning their languages for communication. Molecules are playing this game all the times; for instance, phenolphthalein turns into red color in basic media, signalizing in this way the lack of protons. This trivial color change is not so different from the binary electrical response of a classical p-n junction, used as logic gate (namely YES or NOT) in your computer. In fact, all the molecules signalize in some way when they undergo chemical or physical changes, providing close analogues to the classical logic gates (NOT, AND, OR, NOR etc) employed in binary processing. So, definitely, molecules can be used for computation. But can we use a single molecule as a logic gate device? The answer is yes, but the challenge is indeed enormous! Sin...