HISTORY OF NANOTECHNOLOGY

(1) The first use of the concepts in 'nano-technology' was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. He described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed.


(2) In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction.

(3) In the year of 1965, in a breakthrough observation by Gordon Moore, it was noticed that silicon transistors were undergoing a continual process of scaling downward. This was famously known as Moore’s Law.





(1) Then in the year of 1974 the term “NANO-TECHNOLGY” comes. It was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi. In his paper he defined it as: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule."
(2) Also in 1974, one atom thick deposition technique was developed patented by Dr. Tuomo Suntola and co-workers in Finland.

(3) Thereafter, Dr. K. Eric Drexler an American engineer promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena in the 1980’s. He actually conceptually explored the idea of handling the individual atoms and molecules. Drexler's vision of nanotechnology is often called "Molecular Nanotechnology" (MNT) or "molecular manufacturing," and Drexler at one point proposed the term "zettatech" which never became popular.