Chapter 1
|
|
Lastly, an optical microscope requires the least amount of laboratory space, while the SEM/TEM requires the most amount of laboratory space. An AFM is in the middle of these two.
|
Finally, in comparison to an optical profiler, the AFM is more difficult to
use. This is because the optical profiler does not need any adjustments.
However, the AFM requires adjustments of the scan speed and the
feedback control parameters.
|
| 1.3 Enabling Nanotechnology |
Approximately 20 years ago scientists and engineers began discussing
a technological revolution that would be as dramatic and far-reaching
to society as the industrial revolution - the nanotechnology revolution.
At first the primary promoters of the nanotechnology revolution were
considered eccentric at best, and a little crazy at worst. However, their
ideas and visions are becoming accepted by the mainstream intellectual,
scientific and engineering communities. Recently, governments and
major corporations around the world have committed several billion
dollars per year for the advancement of nanotechnology and nanoscience
research and development.
|
| Atoms and Molecules |
The systematic study, manipulation, and modification of atoms and
molecules having nanometer-sized dimensions began several hundred
years ago. Society has benefited greatly because chemists can use
chemical reactions to combine several types of atoms to create new types
of molecules. With the advent of quantum physics, physicists, chemists
and biologists routinely studied the spectra of atoms and molecules.
Biochemists discovered the usefulness of all types of molecules from
proteins to enzymes to DNA several decades ago.
|
Until recently however, working with and controlling atoms and
molecules was limited to large quantities of these nanometer-sized objects.
Realistically, chemists would modify hundreds of trillions of molecules in
a typical chemical reaction. When chemists synthesize new molecules,
they make them in large quantities by using macroscopic methods such
as heat to initiate chemical reactions. Biologists can identify and create
new types of genetic material, but only on a large number of molecules. |
|
|
|
|
