How does nanotechnology relate to existing disciplines like chemistry or biology?
Nanotechnology overlaps significantly with many disciplines with chemistry, physics, and materials research. These are the fields that discovered the atom and understood its inner workings, developed the science of combining them in precise structures, and developed tools with which these nanostructures are probed and visualized. Manipulation of atoms and nanostructures is what nanotechnology is all about. Nanoparticles and other nanostructured materials are often synthesized using chemical methods. However, nanotechnology is fundamentally different from traditional chemistry because it deals with manipulation and physical control at the atomic level of chemicals. Synthesizing a chemical with nanotechnology could actually mean building it atom by atom. Traditional chemistry in contrast works on a bulk scale. Chemical syntheses typically result in poor yields of desired products with many unwanted by-products. Using nanotechnology to synthesize chemicals could result in greater yield of
