National Nanotechnology Initiative Assessment and Recommendations

Nanotechnology has emerged in the last decades of the 20th century with the development of new enabling technologies for imaging, manipulating, and stimulating matter at the atomic scale. The frontier of nanotechnology research and development (R & D) encompasses a broad range of science and engineering activities directed toward understanding and creating improved materials, devices, and systems that exploit the properties of matter that emerge at the nanoscale. The results promise benefits that will shift paradigms in biomedicine (e.g. imaging, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention); energy (e.g., conversion and storage); electronics (e.g. computing and displays); manufacturing; environmental remediation; and, many other categories of products and applications.