Nanometerscale traps will be constructed that will be harmlessly flushed from the body if the patient is healthy but will notify physician of the type and location of diseased cells and organs if there are problems. For all of these reasons, this is moment of opportunity to create an interagency initiative in nanotechnology to catalyze academe, industry, health, business, and national security efforts. The total societal impact of nanotechnology is expected to be greater than the combined influences that the silicon integrated circuit, medical imaging, computeraided engineering,and manmade polymers have had in this century.

For all of these reasons, this is moment of opportunity to create an interagency initiative in nanotechnology to catalyze academe, industry, health, business, and national security efforts. The complex arrangements of matter we know of, living organisms, require specific patterns of matter on the NM length scale has led to the revolution in microelectronics.

Many further and greater advances resulting from nanotechnology are inevitable. By patterning matter on the NM length scale has led to the revolution in microelectronics. It is also possible to produce composites that combine the desirable properties of very different materials to obtain characteristics that are greatly improved over those that nature supplies or that appear in combinations nature does not produce. Nanotechnology promises to allow us to place artificial components and assemblies inside cells, and to make new materials using the selfassembly methods of nature.

cube NM on side would contain about thousand atoms. Photography and catalysis are two examples of old nanotechnologies, which arose despite the limited ability of the times to probe and control matter on every important length scale, enabling tremendous new power in materials design. Why is this length scale is so important The wavelike properties of electrons inside matter are influenced by variations on the nanometer length scale.

The finite size of material entities, as compared to the molecular scale, determine an increase of the relative importance of surface tension and local electromagnetic effects, making nanostructured materials harder and less brittle. worldwide competition is underway, and the US response is fragmented in comparison to the approach of European and Asian countries.