Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea

Chapter 4. Interlude Two: Tools of the Nanosciences

[Nanofabrication] is building at the ultimate level of finesse.

—Richard SmalleyNobel Laureate and Professor, Rice University

In this chapter…

• Tools for Measuring Nanostructures

• Tools to Make Nanostructures

“In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.” (See Figure 4.1.) So said Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman in a 1960 address commonly considered to have launched nanotechnology, but even he was a bit premature. While miniaturization continued at a breakneck pace, machines continued to shrink one step at a time in what we now call very prolonged top-down nanofabrication. ...