Nanotechnology was defined by the National Nanotechnology Initiative as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing properties of matter. The definition of nanotechnology is inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with these special properties. It is therefore common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the broad range of research and applications whose common trait is size. An earlier description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology.
Charles M. Lieber is an American chemist, inventor, nanotechnologist, and writer. In 2011, Lieber was named the leading chemist in the world for the decade 2000–2010 by Thomson Reuters, based on the impact of his scientific publications. He is known for his contributions to the synthesis, assembly and characterization of nanoscale materials and nanodevices, the application of nanoelectronic devices in biology, and as a mentor to numerous leaders in nanoscience.
Mark Arthur Reed was an American physicist and professor at Yale University. He is noted particularly for seminal research on quantum dots.
Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical properties need to be studied extensively. Some of these candidates include: hybrid molecular/semiconductor electronics, one-dimensional nanotubes/nanowires or advanced molecular electronics.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:
nanoHUB.org is a science and engineering gateway comprising community-contributed resources and geared toward education, professional networking, and interactive simulation tools for nanotechnology. Funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), it is a product of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). NCN supports research efforts in nanoelectronics; nanomaterials; nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS); nanofluidics; nanomedicine, nanobiology; and nanophotonics.
Timothy S. Fisher is an American educator, engineer and expert in the application of nanotechnologies. He is a former professor of mechanical engineering at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University and Director, Nanoscale Transport Research Group-Purdue University. He currently teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. He took his Bachelor of Science and doctorate at Cornell University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. Fisher became the chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering department at University of California, Los Angeles, starting July 1, 2018.
Supriyo Datta is an Indian–American researcher and author. A leading figure in the modeling and understanding of nano-scale electronic conduction, he has been called "one of the most original thinkers in the field of nanoscale electronics."
Kang Lung Wang is recognized as the discoverer of chiral Majorana fermions by IUPAP. Born in Lukang, Changhua, Taiwan, in 1941, Wang received his BS (1964) degree from National Cheng Kung University and his MS (1966) and PhD (1970) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970 to 1972 he was the Assistant Professor at MIT. From 1972 to 1979, he worked at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center as a physicist/engineer. In 1979 he joined the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA, where he is a Professor and leads the Device Research Laboratory (DRL). He served as Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at UCLA from 1993 to 1996. His research activities include semiconductor nano devices, and nanotechnology; self-assembly growth of quantum structures and cooperative assembly of quantum dot arrays Si-based Molecular Beam Epitaxy, quantum structures and devices; Nano-epitaxy of hetero-structures; Spintronics materials and devices; Electron spin and coherence properties of SiGe and InAs quantum structures for implementation of spin-based quantum information; microwave devices. He was the inventor of strained layer MOSFET, quantum SRAM cell, and band-aligned superlattices. He holds 45 patents and published over 700 papers. He is a passionate teacher and has mentored hundreds of students, including MS and PhD candidates. Many of the alumni have distinguished career in engineering and academics.
Zeynep Çelik-Butler is a Turkish-American professor of electrical engineering at the Nanotechnology Research and Teaching Facility within the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. There are two distinctly different areas of research within the group.
Michelle Yvonne Simmons is an Australian quantum physicist, recognised for her foundational contributions to the field of atomic electronics.
Mark S. Lundstrom is an American electrical engineering researcher, educator, and author. He is known for contributions to the theory, modeling, and understanding of semiconductor devices, especially nanoscale transistors, and as the creator of the nanoHUB, a major online resource for nanotechnology. Lundstrom is Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in 2020 served as Acting Dean of the College of Engineering at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Alejandro Strachan is a scientist in the field of computational materials and the Reilly Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue University, he was a staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
R. Edwin Garcia is a Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue University. Garcia's research group focuses on the design of materials and devices through the development of a fundamental understanding of the solid state physics of the individual phases, their short and long range interactions, and its associated microstructural evolution.
Jean-Pierre Leburton is the Gregory E. Stillman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is also a full-time faculty member in the Nanoelectronics and Nanomaterials group of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He is known for his work on semiconductor theory and simulation, and on nanoscale quantum devices including quantum wires, quantum dots, and quantum wells. He studies and develops nanoscale materials with potential electronic and biological applications.
Deji Akinwande is a Nigerian-American professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy affiliation with Materials Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016 from Barack Obama. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the African Academy of Sciences, the Materials Research Society (MRS), and the IEEE.
This glossary of nanotechnology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to nanotechnology, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
Deblina Sarkar is an electrical engineer, and inventor. She is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the AT&T Career Development Chair Professor of the MIT Media Lab. Sarkar has been internationally recognized for her invention of an ultra thin quantum mechanical transistor that can be scaled to nano-sizes and used in nanoelectronic biosensors. As the principal investigator of the Nano Cybernetic Biotrek Lab at MIT, Sarkar leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers towards bridging the gap between nanotechnology and synthetic biology to build new nano-devices and life-machine interfacing technologies with which to probe and enhance biological function.
Supriyo Bandyopadhyay is an Indian-born American electrical engineer, academic and researcher. He is Commonwealth Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he directs the Quantum Device Laboratory.
Dragica Vasileska is an electrical engineer whose research involves what she calls "computational electronics": simulation and modeling of the physics of semiconductor devices, including integrated circuits, solar cells, high-power MOSFETs, and quantum dots. Educated in the former Yugoslavia, in what is now North Macedonia, she works in the US as a professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering at Arizona State University.
