Institute of nanoscience and technology, Mohali, Punjab

Abstract

Nanotechnology draws its name from the prefix "nano". A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter—a distance equal to two to twenty atoms (depending on what type of atom) laid down next to each other. As interpreted by different people at different times as meaning anything from 0.1 nm (controlling the arrangement of individual atoms) to 100 nm or more (anything smaller than microtechnology). The term "nanotechnology" had been coined in 1974 by Norio Taniguichi to describe semiconductor processes involving control on the order of a nanometer. From the mid-1980s on progress in nanometer-scale science and technology exploded, and the term nanotechnology was appropriated by researchers, media, businesses, and funding agencies to refer to any technology in which control of the structure of matter on a scale of nanometers to hundreds of nanometers. Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the atomic and molecular scale to create materials with remarkably varied and new properties, is a rapidly expanding area of research with huge potential to revolutionize our lives and to provide technological solutions to our problems in agriculture, energy, the environment and medicine. In order to fully realize this potential, we need to be able to control the synthesis of nanoparticles, the construction of nano-devices, and the characterization of materials on the nanoscale and to understand the effects of these things on environment and health. INSTITUTE OF NANO-SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (INST) will bring together chemists, physicists and materials scientists at the forefront of the science of making and characterizing materials at the nanoscale, with biologists and biochemists applying these discoveries in the agricultural, medical, biological sphere. It brings together research-active basic and applied scientists from different backgrounds in an intimate atmosphere to learn about the needs and scientific advances in their respective fields and to build interactions and collaborations.