Miniaturization has revolutionized human affairs by making possible inexpensive integrated electronic circuits comprised of devices and wires with submicrometer dimensions. These integrated circuits are now ubiquitous, controlling everything from our automobiles to our toasters. Continued miniaturization, beyond submicrometer dimensions, seems likely. And so we are compelled to explore science and technology on a new, yet smaller, scale: the nanometer scale.

This volume is a survey of the machinery and science of the nanometer scale. Its twenty-six contributing authors, drawn from many different disciplines including atomic physics, microelectronics, polymer chemistry, and biophysics, delineate the course of current research and articulate a vision for the development of the nanometer frontiers in electronics, mechanics, chemistry, magnetics, materials, and biology. They reveal a world thirty years hence where motors are smaller than the diameter of a human hair; where single-celled organisms are programmed to fabricate materials with nanometer precision; where single atoms are used for computation; and where quantum chaos is the norm.

Aimed at the level of comprehension of at least a junior-or senior-level undergraduate science (Biology, chemistry, physics, or engineering) student, the book provides a survey of developments within the breadth of the nanotechnology field. The book is thus intended for both students and researchers in microscopy, polymer chemistry, bio-physics, atomic physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science, condensed matter physics, biology, lithography, and chaos.

Mathematical derivations have been minimized, but not eliminated. The book contains many illustrations, including a colour insert.

Contents:
1. Nanotechnology/G. Timp.
2. Nano-electronics for advanced computation and communication/G. Timp, R.E. Howard and P.M. Mankiewich.
3. Nanostructures in motion: micro-instruments for moving nanometer-scale objects/N.C. MacDonald.
4. Limits of conventional lithography/D.M. Tennant.
5. Fabrication of atomically controlled nanostructures and their device application/H. Sakaki.
6. Chemical approaches to semiconductor nanocrystals and nanocrystal materials/Louis Brus.
7. Nanotechnology in carbon materials/M.S. Dresselhaus, G. Dresselhaus and R. Saito.
8. Self-assembly and self-assembled monolayers in micro-and nanofabrication/James L. Wilbur and George M. Whitesides.
9. Biocatalytic synthesis of polymers of precisely defined structures/Timothy J. Deming, Vincent P. Conticello and David A. Tirrell.
10. Atom optics: using light to position atoms/Jabez J. McClelland and Mara Prentiss.
11. From the bottom up: building things with atoms/Don Eigler.
12. Physical properties of nanometer-scale magnets/David D. Awschalom and Stephan von Molnar.
13. Single electron transport through a quantum dot/Leo P. Kouwenhoven and Paul L. McEuen.
14. Chaos in ballistic nanostructures:
Part I. Theory/Harold U. Baranger. Part II. Experiment/R.M. Westervelt.
15. Semiconducting and superconducting physics and devices in the InAs/AISb material system/Herbert Kroemer and Evelyn Hu. Index.