Foreward: Understanding Nanotechnology. Michael L. Roukes For ...

structures that are too large, in general, to allow easy theoretical modeling using
conventional approaches of quantum physics or chemistry. So this is indeed a tricky
realm, where unexpected and wonderful new properties emerge – and the elucidation of
such properties represent the “front lines” of some of today’s most exciting nanoscience.
Nobel laureate and Caltech physics professor Richard P. Feynman clearly anticipated
these forefronts in 1959, in his legendary speech “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” [1].
“This field is not quite the same as the others in that it will not tell us much of the
fundamental physics in the sense of, ‘What are the strange particles?’. But it is more like
solid state physics in the sense that it might tell us much of the great interest about the
strange phenomena that occur in complex situations. Furthermore, a point that is most
important is that it would have an enormous number of technical applications.”
It is precisely upon such complex systems that nanotechnology will be built - nanoscale
systems that are too large to be considered molecules, but not yet large enough to
transcend the seemingly exotic mesoscopic world back to the ordinary realm of the
macroscopic. In 1972, another Nobel physicist, Phillip W. Anderson, elegantly
articulated the concept of “emergent” properties in complex systems in his seminal article
entitled “More is different” [2].
“The behavior of large and complex aggregations of elementary particles, it turns out, is
not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few
particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the
understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in
nature as any other”
So as we survey the impressive recent advances of naonscience (such as outlined in this
volume) it begins to become clear that much, if not most, still remains to be learned.
From this knowledge will emerge the rules that future nanoengineers will routinely
employ to realize their atomically precise technology. Meanwhile, our research today on
systems at the nanoscale is a crucible within which traditionally disparate disciplines –
from the life sciences, to quantum physics, to semiconductor device engineering – are
melding to form a new science. At this exciting convergence of fields we are
collaboratively beginning to teach ourselves new ways to thing about – and to engineer –
matter at ultrasmall dimensions.
[1] A transcript is available at www.its.caltech.edu/~feynman
[2] P. W. Anderson, Science 177, 393 (1972).