[newton97 (OP)]

what are the future scopes of nanotechnology?

[evan_au]

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom

[syhprum]

"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"
Not when making transistors for CPU chips 7nm seems to be about as small as they are going to get

[sarafox]

thank you for sharing

[chiralSPO]

A far as I know, Nanotech is pushing four main fields forward (or these fields are advancing nanotech--take your pick)

1) Electronics devices.
Circuit components are now essentially nanoscale, and the ability to fit more and more transistors on a chip is driving the tech to go smaller and smaller. There are also experimental technologies aimed at using fluorescent nanoparticles in
LEDs.

2) Catalysis
Nanoparticles (NPs) can be excellent heterogeneous catalysts if they are made of the right materials. In large part this is due to the surface area to volume ratio being maximized as the particles get smaller. Also, the smaller the NP, the less similar to the bulk material. Researchers are developing ways to control the shape, size, composition, and atomic structure.

3) Drug delivery
Actually, pharmaceutical companies care a lot about not only the composition of their drugs, but also the formulations. Many look into the absorption profile as a function of the size of the crystals of the drug. Nanoparticulate drugs dissolve quickly, and can deliver drugs faster than doses using larger crystals.

4)
Rockets and explosives
Many rocket motor compositions still involve mixtures of solids, which then must react. Again, due to the surface are to volume ratio, smaller particles are going to allow much much better mixing (think about mixing dark and light gravel together vs dark and light sand, vs dark and light flour...)


So... we're not yet really making nanotech machines with moving parts--though there is some progress there. Honestly, the most impressive nanotech that I am aware of, that is most like scifi... is biology! Many of our enzymes are nanotech, and we get things like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/7x9zmi/kinesin_protein_moving_a_molecule_around_a_cell/

[Hayseed]

From what I read, nano tech and meta materials will be a revolution.   And if not directly......will cause one.   Maybe many.

Great opportunity in it and it will probably effect everything in the future.

And it will great in an academic sense, up to date cutting tech and all that.  And it should give us greater understanding of the fundamentals.

One can go with the research and theory part of it, or one can go with the engineering of it.

It's not a dull field.   It will interest you all your life.

Edit:   I'll bet switches smaller than 7 nm can be made.

[chiralSPO]

I'll bet switches smaller than 7 nm can be made.

We can make 'em as small as we like (there are single-molecule switches)--the issue is they have to be stable and not leaky. Nobody wants a computer that corrupts 0.1% of its data per day... Nanotech helps us build really small structures, but it doesn't save us from QM.