Top-down micro and nanotechnology

Top-down micro and nanotechnology

Nanotechnology deals with natural and artificial structures on the nanometer scale, i.e.

in the range from 1 μm down to 10 ˚A. One nanometer, 1 nm = 10⁻⁹ m, is roughly the

distance from one end to the other of a line of five neighboring atoms in an ordinary solid. The nanometer scale can also be illustrated as in Fig. 1.1: if the size of a soccer ball (similar to 30 cm = 3 x 10⁻¹ m) is reduced 10.000 times we reach the width of a thin human hair (similar to 30 μm = 3x10⁻⁵ m). If we reduce the size of the hair with the same factor, we reach the width of a carbon nanotube (similar to 3 nm=3 x10⁻⁹ m).

It is quite remarkable, and very exciting indeed, that we today have a technology that

involves manipulation of the ultimate building blocks of ordinary matter: single atoms

and molecules. Nanotechnology owes it existence to the astonishing development within the field of micro electronics. Since the invention of the integrated circuit nearly half a century ago in 1958, there has been an exponential growth in the number of transistors per micro chip and an associated decrease in the smallest width of the wires in the electronic circuits.