Nanotechnology: Fundamental Aspects and Biomedical and Technological Applications

Abstract

Richard Feynman's famous talk titled 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics' at Caltech's annual American Physical Society meeting in 1959 highlighted the importance of nanoscience and opened a whole new vista of the nanoworld. In the International System of Units nanoscience, the prefix nano means one-billionth or 10-9. So 1 nanometer (nm) = 10–9 m. Nanomaterials are defined as a set of substances whose at least one dimension is approximately less than 100 nm and show special properties due to minuscule size. For instance, variable colors shown by gold and silver nanoparticles, change in the oxidation state of nanosized aluminum crystals, and so on. Nanomaterials already exist in nature. However, the recent advancements in microscopy and technology have empowered scientists and technologists to witness phenomena occurring naturally at the nanoscale dimension. These phenomena are mostly based on quantum mechanical interactions and expanded surface area. The nanomaterials can be classified in various modes: dimension, composition, morphology, geometry, etc. This chapter intend to overview the classification of nanomaterials and their applications in the different fields.