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Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Table of Contents

1. Definition

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometres, where unique physical, chemical, and biological phenomena enable novel applications.1 The International Organization for Standardization maintains the core vocabulary of the field in ISO 80004-1, which defines foundational terms including nanoscale, nanomaterial, and nano-object.2 The term was coined in 1974 by Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo University of Science to describe semiconductor processes such as thin-film deposition and ion-beam milling with control on the order of a nanometre, although the conceptual foundations of the field are conventionally traced to Richard Feynman’s 1959 lecture, in which he proposed the direct manipulation of individual atoms and molecules as a new field of physics.3 4

As a platform technology rather than a biological model, nanotechnology derives its behaviour from two structural mechanics of matter at the nanoscale. First, the surface-area-to-volume ratio increases dramatically as dimensions shrink, so surface atoms and interfaces dominate material behaviour. Second, quantum effects arise when particles shrink, so that the properties of a nanoscale object, such as its colour, conductivity, or reactivity, become dependent on its precise size rather than only its composition.5 Because these mechanics operate at the same dimensional scale as biological machinery, engineered nanomaterials interact with proteins, membranes, and cells at what is termed the nano-bio interface, where physicochemical characteristics govern uptake and biological response.6 Cellular internalisation of engineered nanostructures, for example, proceeds predominantly through endocytic pathways.7

2. Purpose

The primary value proposition of nanotechnology is that it permits the properties of materials and devices to be engineered by design rather than inherited from bulk composition: size, shape, surface chemistry, and architecture can be tuned to produce behaviour that bulk materials cannot achieve.1 This capability improves, and in some sectors revolutionises, fields including information technology, medicine, transportation, energy, food safety, and environmental science.1 It thereby supersedes legacy approaches in which the properties of a product were constrained by the fixed characteristics of macroscopic materials.

Its human relevance is most advanced in biomedicine. Nanomedicine uses engineered nanocarriers, including polymeric nanoparticles, liposomes, dendrimers, mesoporous particles, and carbon nanotubes, to protect therapeutics, control their release, and direct them to sites of disease, addressing the poor solubility, non-specific distribution, and toxicity of many conventional drugs.8 The clinical capability of this approach was demonstrated at population scale during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) enabled the first widely deployed in vivo messenger RNA delivery systems, supporting vaccines administered to billions of people.9

3. Methodology

Nanofabrication proceeds by two complementary approaches. Top-down methods remove or pattern material from larger substrates using techniques such as photolithography, electron-beam lithography, focused-ion-beam milling, nanoimprint lithography, and scanning-probe methods including dip-pen nanolithography; these are performed on substrates such as silicon wafers and glass under cleanroom conditions.10 Bottom-up methods assemble structures atom by atom or molecule by molecule through chemical and physical processes such as molecular self-assembly, chemical vapour deposition, and colloidal synthesis, which permit hybrid strategies combining lithographic definition with self-assembled organisation.10

For biomedical nanomaterials, formulation methodology is centred on controlled assembly of carrier architectures. LNPs, for instance, are formulated from four lipid components, namely ionisable lipids, helper or neutral lipids, cholesterol, and polyethylene glycol (PEG)-conjugated lipids, whose proportions are optimised to control particle size, stability, and delivery efficiency.9 Synthetic protocols for polymeric and inorganic nanoparticles follow stepwise preparation and purification schemes whose rigour and reproducibility depend on well-documented standard operating procedures and comprehensive characterisation.11

Characterisation is mandatory at every stage, and electron microscopy is regarded as the gold standard: scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging establish the shape, size, and size distribution of nanoparticles, supplemented by techniques such as dynamic light scattering, electrophoretic mobility, and spectroscopic methods.6 Robust characterisation is supported by international standards developed by ISO Technical Committee 229, which specifies protocols for measuring the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials intended for medical use.6

4. Performance

Investment and translation metrics indicate substantial empirical performance. Cumulative United States federal funding for nanotechnology through the National Nanotechnology Initiative totals nearly 47 billion US dollars since 2001, with a request of 1.45 billion US dollars for fiscal year 2026.12 Since the establishment of the Initiative in the early 2000s, the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved more than 50 nanomedicines,11 and approximately 2,586 distinct nano-enabled medical devices were sold in the United States between 1980 and 2017.6 LNP-based mRNA vaccines constitute a clinically validated, large-scale demonstration of nanoscale drug delivery in humans.9

Reproducibility and current technical boundaries remain significant constraints. The literature exhibits a low degree of reliability and reproducibility, attributed to the absence of a universal reporting system and decentralised characterisation methodologies,6 and it has been reported that as little as 12 per cent of nanotechnology research data is published or electronically accessible.11 Delivery efficiency to target solid tumours is empirically low: a reanalysis of published murine pharmacokinetic data reported a median of approximately 0.67 per cent of the injected nanoparticle dose reaching tumour tissue, with tumour exposure approximately 40 per cent of plasma exposure under classical pharmacokinetic metrics.13 Fabrication is bounded by throughput and cost, as electron-beam lithography operates approximately ten million times more slowly than optical lithography.10 Finally, the toxicity of engineered nanomaterials, which varies with size, shape, and surface chemistry, remains an active area of predictive, mechanism-based evaluation, particularly because primary cells and immortalised cell lines can respond differently to identical nanoparticle exposures.14

5. Applications

Primary research and industrial applications are concentrated in five areas. In medicine, nanocarriers serve targeted drug delivery, imaging, diagnostics, and vaccine platforms, with LNP-mRNA products deployed at global clinical scale.8 9 In electronics and photonics, semiconductor nanofabrication underlies modern integrated-circuit manufacturing, and quantum dots are commercially deployed in television screens and LED lamps, with prospective uses in miniature sensors, thinner solar cells, and encrypted quantum communication.10 5 In structural and functional materials, carbon nanotubes are incorporated into composites, conductors, sensors, and biomedical devices by virtue of their high flexibility, thermal conductivity, low density, and chemical stability.7 In energy applications, two-dimensional materials and nanostructured electrodes are applied to electronics, energy storage, and optoelectronic devices.15 In environmental and food systems, nanotechnology is applied to food safety and environmental science.1

Standardised contexts of use are well established: terminology and characterisation are governed by ISO Technical Committee 229 standards,6 and national coordination is institutionalised through the National Nanotechnology Initiative and its annual reporting.12 Deployment stage varies by sector: nanolithography is mature in semiconductor manufacturing,10 quantum dots are commercial in consumer displays,5 carbon nanotubes are used in commercial composite and energy products,7 and nanomedicine is clinically established for a growing set of approved products while targeted-tumour delivery remains at an active research and development stage.11 13

6. Variations

  • Nanoparticles — Particulate nanomaterials, including polymeric, metallic, mesoporous, and lipid-based particles, used as carriers for drugs, imaging agents, and nucleic acids.8
  • Carbon Nanotubes — Cylindrical carbon nanostructures whose exceptional flexibility, thermal conductivity, low density, and chemical stability support applications in composites, electronics, sensors, and biomedicine.7
  • Graphene and Two-Dimensional Materials — Atomically thin crystalline materials, a subdiscipline established by the isolation of graphene in 2004, whose reduced dimensionality produces novel electronic, optoelectronic, and energy-related properties.15
  • Quantum Dots — Semiconductor nanocrystals a few nanometres in diameter whose size-dependent quantum effects determine their optical properties, recognised by the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and deployed in displays, lighting, and biomedical imaging.5
  • Semiconductor Nanowires — One-dimensional crystalline structures whose anisotropic geometry, high surface-to-volume ratio, and two-dimensional carrier and photon confinement enable nanoscale diodes, lasers, detectors, and waveguides.16
  • Dendrimers — Monodisperse, radially symmetric macromolecules with a defined core, inner shell, and multifunctional outer shell, synthesised generation by generation for drug and gene delivery.17
  • Molecular Machines — Molecules with controllable mechanical motion, including catenanes, rotaxanes, and unidirectional molecular motors, recognised by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, capable of performing tasks when supplied with energy.18

  1. National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, About Nanotechnology, nano.gov, accessed 2026-10-21.
    This official United States government resource defines nanotechnology as the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometres, where unique phenomena enable novel applications, and notes that matter at this scale exhibits unusual physical, chemical, and biological properties differing from those of bulk materials. It further identifies the sectors that nanotechnology improves or revolutionises, including information technology, medicine, transportation, energy, food safety, and environmental science. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. International Organization for Standardization, ISO/TS 80004-1:2015, Nanotechnologies — Vocabulary — Part 1: Core terms, ISO, 2015.
    This technical specification lists the terms and definitions related to the core vocabulary of nanotechnology, including nanoscale, nanomaterial, and nano-object, and is intended to facilitate unambiguous communication among industrial, research, governmental, and consumer communities. It has since been consolidated into the current ISO 80004-1 standard for nanotechnology vocabulary. ↩︎

  3. Richard P. Feynman, There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics, Caltech Engineering and Science, 1960.
    This transcript of the lecture delivered at the American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on 29 December 1959 is the conventional conceptual origin of nanotechnology. Feynman argued that direct manipulation of individual atoms and molecules was physically feasible and proposed the miniaturisation of information storage, writing, and fabrication far beyond the precision achievable at the time. ↩︎

  4. Encyclopedia MDPI, History of Nanotechnology, Encyclopedia, accessed 2026-10-21.
    This encyclopedic review traces the historical development of nanotechnology, including the coining of the term by Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo University of Science in 1974 to describe semiconductor processes such as thin-film deposition and ion-beam milling with nanometre-level control, the convergence of experimental advances in the 1980s, and the field’s emergence into public and governmental awareness in the early 2000s. ↩︎

  5. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023, NobelPrize.org, 2023.
    This press release documents the award of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, and Aleksey Yekimov for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, nanoscale particles whose size-dependent quantum effects determine their characteristics. It explains that quantum effects arise when particles shrink and that quantum dots now illuminate television screens and LED lamps, with prospective applications in flexible electronics, miniature sensors, and solar cells. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. Sharifi, S., Mahmoud, N. N., Voke, E., Landry, M. P., and Mahmoudi, M., Importance of Standardizing Analytical Characterization Methodology for Improved Reliability of the Nanomedicine Literature, Nano-Micro Letters, 2022.
    This open-access review analyses the reliability of the nanomedicine literature, attributing its low reproducibility to the lack of a universal reporting system and decentralised characterisation methodologies. It documents that approximately 2,586 nano-enabled medical devices were sold in the United States between 1980 and 2017, identifies SEM and TEM imaging as the gold standards for characterising particle shape and size distribution, and describes the ISO and ISO/TC 229 standards available for robust nanomaterial characterisation, as well as the nano-bio interface considerations required for safe and efficient nanomedicine. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Thiruvengadam, M., et al., Recent Insights and Multifactorial Applications of Carbon Nanotubes, Micromachines, 2021.
    This open-access review surveys carbon nanotube science and applications, describing the high flexibility, good thermal conductivity, low density, and chemical stability of carbon nanotubes, their use in composites, electronics, sensors, and biomedical applications such as drug delivery, and the cellular uptake of functionalised nanotubes through endocytic pathways. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. Afzal, O., et al., Nanoparticles in Drug Delivery: From History to Therapeutic Applications, Nanomaterials, 2022.
    This open-access review traces the history of nanotechnology and nanoparticle drug carriage from Feynman’s lecture to contemporary therapeutic applications. It describes the principal nanocarrier classes, including polymeric nanoparticles, mesoporous nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, dendrimers, liposomes, and metallic nanoparticles, and explains how engineered nanoparticles refine the therapeutic profile of active pharmaceutical ingredients through targeted delivery and controlled release. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. Swetha, K., Kotla, N. G., Tunki, L., Jayaraj, A., Bhargava, S. K., Hu, H., Bonam, S. R., and Kurapati, R., Recent Advances in the Lipid Nanoparticle-Mediated Delivery of mRNA Vaccines, Vaccines, 2023.
    This open-access review examines the design, composition, and clinical deployment of lipid nanoparticles for messenger RNA vaccine delivery, including the COVID-19 vaccines BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273. It details the four-lipid composition of LNPs, comprising ionisable lipids, helper lipids, cholesterol, and PEG-conjugated lipids, and describes LNPs as one of the most advanced technologies for efficient in vivo mRNA delivery. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. Stokes, K., Clark, K., Odetade, D., Hardy, M., and Goldberg Oppenheimer, P., Advances in lithographic techniques for precision nanostructure fabrication in biomedical applications, Discover Nano, 2023.
    This open-access review presents the principal nanofabrication techniques, spanning top-down approaches such as photolithography, electron-beam lithography, focused-ion-beam methods, nanoimprint lithography, and dip-pen and thermal scanning probe lithography, together with bottom-up approaches including molecular self-assembly. It quantifies key boundaries, noting that electron-beam lithography operates approximately ten million times more slowly than optical lithography and is constrained by high cost, low throughput, and intrinsic resolution limits. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  11. Sims, K. R., Maceren, J. P., Strand, A. I., He, B., Overby, C., and Benoit, D. S. W., Rigor and reproducibility in polymer nanoparticle synthesis and characterization, RSC Advances, 2020.
    This open-access study applies standardised process-improvement methods to enhance the rigour and reproducibility of diblock copolymer nanoparticle synthesis and characterisation. It reports that more than 50 nanomedicines have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration since the National Nanotechnology Initiative was established in the early 2000s, and cites estimates that as little as 12 per cent of nanotechnology research data is currently published or accessible through electronic databases. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  12. National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, NNI Supplement to the President’s 2026 Budget, nano.gov, 2025.
    This official annual report of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, submitted as a supplement to the President’s 2026 Budget request, documents a request of 1.45 billion US dollars for nanotechnology research and development across participating federal agencies. It records that cumulative NNI funding since the initiative’s inception in 2001 totals nearly 47 billion US dollars, inclusive of the 2026 request. ↩︎ ↩︎

  13. Price, L. S. L., Stern, S. T., Deal, A. M., Kabanov, A. V., and Zamboni, W. C., et al., A reanalysis of nanoparticle tumor delivery using classical pharmacokinetic metrics, Science Advances, 2020.
    This open-access reanalysis of published murine nanoparticle tumour pharmacokinetic data re-evaluates the widely cited estimate that only approximately 0.7 per cent of the administered nanoparticle dose reaches solid tumours. It reports a median of 0.67 per cent of the injected dose in tumour tissue and demonstrates that under classical pharmacokinetic metrics tumour exposure is approximately 40 per cent of plasma exposure, providing a quantitative basis for assessing the efficiency limits of nanomedicine delivery. ↩︎ ↩︎

  14. Liu, R., and Yan, B., Predictive and Mechanism-Based Toxicity Evaluation of Engineered Nanoparticles, Nanomaterials, 2026.
    This open-access review addresses the safety boundary of nanotechnology, noting that engineered nanomaterials are released into the environment during production, use, and disposal, raising ecological and human health concerns. It highlights the differing nanoparticle uptake, intracellular processing, and stress responses between primary cells and immortalised cancer cell lines, and promotes the integration of experimental data with computational nanotoxicology for screening and prioritising emerging nanomaterials. ↩︎

  15. Lei, Y., Zhang, T., Lin, Y.-C., et al., Graphene and Beyond: Recent Advances in Two-Dimensional Materials Synthesis, Properties, and Devices, ACS Nanoscience Au, 2022.
    This open-access review surveys the two-dimensional materials field since the isolation of graphene in 2004, including synthesis control, defect engineering, and applications in electronics, optoelectronics, and energy. It explains that reducing material dimensions leads to band-structure renormalisation and novel properties through quantum confinement, and covers the tailoring of two-dimensional materials through layer number, defects, morphology, strain, and moiré patterning. ↩︎ ↩︎

  16. Agarwal, R., and Lieber, C. M., Semiconductor nanowires: optics and optoelectronics, Applied Physics A, 2006.
    This open-access review examines the optical and optoelectronic properties of single-crystalline semiconductor nanowires. It attributes their unique behaviour to anisotropic geometry, large surface-to-volume ratio, and carrier and photon confinement in two dimensions, and reviews progress on nanowire devices including diodes, lasers, detectors, and waveguides. ↩︎

  17. Abbasi, E., Aval, S. F., Akbarzadeh, A., Milani, M., Nasrabadi, H. T., Joo, S. W., Hanifehpour, Y., Nejati-Koshki, K., and Pashaei-Asl, R., Dendrimers: synthesis, applications, and properties, Nanoscale Research Letters, 2014.
    This open-access review describes dendrimers as nano-sized, radially symmetric molecules with well-defined, homogeneous, and monodisperse structures comprising a symmetric core, an inner shell, and an outer shell. It covers divergent and convergent synthetic approaches, including PAMAM dendrimer synthesis generation by generation, and applications in drug delivery, gene delivery, and biomedical imaging. ↩︎

  18. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016, NobelPrize.org, 2016.
    This press release documents the award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. It recounts the key developments of the field: Sauvage’s 1983 catenane, Stoddart’s 1991 rotaxane and subsequent molecular lift and molecular muscle, and Feringa’s 1999 unidirectional molecular motor, together constituting molecules with controllable movements that perform tasks when energy is supplied. ↩︎