What Is Nanoscience?
Nanoscience is the science of the incredibly small — sizes that only the most high-tech of high-tech microscopes can see. It is one of the hottest topics in all of science, touching on physics, biology, chemistry, geology, and materials science and engineering. By working in the world of the ultrasmall, scientists are bringing big new things to our world. These include new green technologies, treatments for various diseases, energy technologies, and more.
The term “nano” means one billionth of something. The “nano” in nanoscience refers to a nanometer, one-billionth of a meter (1 meter = 3.3 feet). Just how small is that?
In this Science 101: What is Nanoscience video, assistant scientist Jie Xu explains what nanoscience is, and how it is being applied at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility. Nanoscience is the science of the incredibly small — sizes that only the most sophisticated high-tech microscopes can see. It is one of the hottest topics in all of science. Every year, many hundreds of scientists travel to the CNM from around the world to investigate the properties of materials at the scale of atoms and molecules. By advancing our understanding of material structure at this scale, Argonne scientists like Xu and many others are gaining ever deeper understanding of properties at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) is one of five Department of Energy centers in the U.S. for nanoscience and technology.
By advancing our understanding of materials, molecules and chemical processes at this scale, scientists at these centers are gaining ever deeper understanding of how properties emerge that can be put to practical use. Armed with that knowledge, they are designing and building the next generation of materials and molecules. These are leading to sustainable green technologies, more efficient mass-manufacturing, new drugs, treatment of brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, improved battery materials, new quantum information and sensing devices and more.
What Are NanoStructures?
Structures only the most high-tech of microscopes can see.
Nanostructures have one or more dimensions a hundred-thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and not much larger than a gold