This is a communication between Gregory J. Salamo (Arkansas, USA) and Christian Joachim (CNRS, France) which took place three years ago. It was invited for an article category entitled “Nano Opinion", to be published with the journal launch of Nanoscale Research Letters (NRL). However, this article category was not launched with NRL when the journal was finally launched with Springer half a year later. Today, I accidentally opened the two submissions and found both still worthy of a bunch to share. Therefore, I would like to share them with you as two blog posts. Here, first come Gregory Salamo’s:

The Mysteries at the Nanoscale
Gregory J. Salamo
Department of Physics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA

Today many of these mysteries lie at the nanoscale and it is the pursuit and discovery of these mysteries, and the search to the answers to these mysteries, that is rightfully the term nanoscience.

Earlier this year Dr. Christian Joachim wrote an article ¹ in Nature titled “To be nano or not to be nano?” In his article Dr. Joachim argues that the term nanoscience is currently used far more widely then it should be, causing confusion at funding agencies and within the general pubic and even scientific community. From his point of view, “nanoscience should be reserved solely for the study of a single atom or a single molecule, that is, one entity at a time and not for groups of such entities where statistics or interactions between them come into play. From his perspective, the result of this misapplication of the term is that “the craft of atomic and molecular manipulations, which is practiced only by a few dozen groups around the world, often serves as a pretext for thousands of other labs to be financially supported on the same track.” Certainly, one need only look at the research achievements of Dr. Joachim to understand the merit of this craft. The manipulation of atoms and molecules is beautifully accomplished using scanning tunneling microscopy STM), providing perspective for Dr. Joachim’s point of view.

However, not withstanding the miracle of atom and molecule manipulations by a STM tip, I would like to offer a different perspective to the meaning of the terms nanoscience and nanotechnology. One that is much more inclusive than Dr. Joachim suggests. Many of us were excited and driven to science and engineering careers by the natural investigative nature of the subjects. Consequently those of us who passionately pursue science and engineering understand the excitement we experience when, with relentless step-by-step pursuit, we are the first to uncover the answer to a scientific mystery. In these endeavors, we have learned that there is no substitute to experiencing these emotions first hand. Today many of these mysteries lie at the nanoscale and it is the pursuit and discovery of these mysteries, and the search to the answers to these mysteries, that is rightfully the term nanoscience.

Richard Feynman, in a 1959 talk entitled “There’s Room at the Bottom,” with the usual clarity of his famous “Lectures in Physics”, challenged physicists to explore the field we now call nanotechnology. His vision was the control of materials on the atomic scale, a key technology for future electronic, optoelectronic and electromechanical devices. Many years later we have learned how to pattern devices on the sub-micron scale, devices which form the basis of all modern electronics that in turn makes possible much of our information economy. Yet even given the amazing electronics entry into the submicron scale that we see today in numerous products, we are only now starting to realize Feynman’s original fundamental idea of a bottomup technology. With this realization will come a further reduction in the size of semiconductor devices that will lead to faster, smaller computers, denser information storage, numerous breakthroughs in biology and medicine and along with them, we may expect new mysteries not yet even imagined.

One would not have to know Richard Feynman personally to realize that it was exactly the discovery of these mysteries and their understanding that characterized his challenge. Building nanostructures from the bottom-up, by any means, uncovering and understanding their mysterious behavior and utilizing that behavior for our betterment, best describes the terms nanoscience and nanotechnology. It is not simply the study of a single atom or a single molecule – very far from it. In fact, it is perhaps surprising that in spite of the fact that we have studied atoms and molecules for such a long time that our fundamental understanding of material science at the nanoscale is still in its infancy. The reason is that a new door in science and technology is opening, based on the recently developed ability to see and organize matter on the nanoscale. It is just this fact that tells us that nanoscale is not just another step toward miniaturization, but an era in new mysterious behaviors that we can now see. Why a certain shape, a certain color, a certain organization? Why are the optical, electrical, mechanical properties so unusual? Can they be understood, predicted, or even tailored? For example, gold or semiconductor particles have a color that dramatically depends on size crossing the entire visible spectrum. In addition to color, another fundamental mystery of nanoscience is that nanostructures self-assemble. That is, they build themselves from the bottom up. Is the underlying science of self-assembly connected to Nature’s self assembly? Can we encourage Nature to self-assemble what we prefer? What wonderful mysterious and the challenge to solve them lie ahead.

While as it is with all things, some scientists and engineers will misuse the words nanoscience and nanotechnology, for the most part the scientific and engineering community is attracted by the mysteries “to be nano”.

Comment from Christian Joachims

Reference:
¹ C. Joachim, Nature Materials 4, 107 (2005).