1. How small is "nano"? Technically, a nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter. Alternatively, Thomas Kenny of Stanford University describes it as...

2. ...almost as wide as a DNA molecule and 10 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. It's about how much your fingernails grow each second and how far the San Andreas fault slips in half a second. It's the thickness of a drop of water spread over a square meter. It's one-tenth the thickness of the metal film on your tinted sunglasses or your potato chip bag. The smallest lithographic feature on a Pentium computer chip is about 100 nanometers.

3. Nanoelectronics The relentless trend to miniaturize electronic devices to achieve higher operating speeds and device densities is bringing the devices into the nanometer scale

4. Nanomaterials (self-assembly) Self-organizing Nanomaterials are attractive for technology applications because they provide a means to precisely engineer nanometer-scale structures over large wafer areas.

5. Nanomechanics Nanomechanics refers to the science and technology of mechanical systems which either contain nanometer-scale elements, or are used to create or make measurements on nanometer-scale entities.

6. Bionanotechnology In bio-nanotechnology, the materials and technology of traditional nanoscience are incorporated into biological systems