What is the difference between nanomaterial and molecular nanotechnology?
Nanomaterials can be constructed by top down techniques,
producing very small structures from larger pieces of material, for example by
etching to create circuits on the surface of a silicon microchip. They may also
be constructed by bottom up techniques,
atom by atom or molecule by molecule. One way of doing this is self-assembly,
in which the atoms or molecules arrange themselves into a structure due to
their natural properties. Crystals grown for the semiconductor industry provide
an example of self-assembly, as does chemical synthesis
of large molecules.
Molecular
nanotechnology is a term that
usually describes a molecule-based Nano technological concept; that means it
starts with molecules as building blocks (and therefore is a bottom-up technique).
Work in this area
combines nanotechnology,
chemical engineering, and materials chemistry to produce materials with novel
functionality. These novel materials find use in a wide range of application
such as energy production, energy storage, and catalysis
Until machinery
capable of automated and industrial-scale
nano-assembly can be built, the parallelism of chemical synthesis
and self-assembly is necessary when controlling materials at the nanoscale.
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