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Nonetechnology is cool!	Customer Rating:
Good book for a common reader. It is not very scientific, but gives a good understanding of what nanotechnology is and where it applies. I am a scientist who currently works in this field, and even for me it was interesting to see this kind of simple prospective without too many details.

Understanding Nanotechnology, a compilation of articles from Scientific American

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"Understanding Technology", a compilation of articles from Scientific American, is an excellent book for the layperson to find out about nanotechnology. It's not too lofty or heavily technical - a big help in introducing someone to this field who might not have a background in science. Very readable and interesting. Unfortunately, the field of nanotech is changing so rapidly that many discoveries have been made since this book was first published.

Nanostructures Boast Superior Results

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Nano structures boast superior electrical, chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. Improvements may include circuit lines less than 100 nanometers in distance and nanoelectronic devices replacing existing electronic devices. In 1987, Theordore A Fulton and Gerald J. Dolan of Bell Laboratories constructed the first single electron transfer. It had the advantage of low power usage and heat leapfrogging past the 2014 heat problem. In 1998 Cees Dekker's group at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands created a transistor from a carbon nanotube. In 1999, James M Tour and Mark A Reed demonstrated that single molecules could act as molecular switches. Exxon Mobile created Zeolites, minerals with pores of less than a nanometer which serve as an effective catalyst to break down or crack large hydrocarbon molecules to form gasoline. Nanotech's vision is to assemble complex machines and circuits atom by atom. The author predicts the top down approach will be the most likely method of choice for building complex devices (electronbeam lithography, Zyvex, Quantum Dot Corporation) Nanomechanical signal processing is constructed from a million nanomechanical elements with the advantage of only dispating a millionth of a watt of energy. Low powered Nanomechanical devices will create a proliferation and distribution of cheap, ultraminiture smart sensors.

A good introduction	Customer Rating:
If you want to know what Nanothechnology is this book will tell you. It is aimed at the "intelligent layman" and as such succeeds rather well. I found it easier going from a stylistic point of view than Ratner's "Nanothechnology: Gentle Introduction to the next big idea". If I were to buy only one of them I should buy this one.

An excellent introduction for the new technological bang

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Materials Science usually offers an unique opportunity to test our scientific models. The search for new properties in the mesoscopic realm has open such expectatives in several scientific fields -from physics and chemistry to biology and medicine- that an introductory text is a great help in order to obtain a wide view of the next scientific and technological trends. Scientific American has made this recopilation of several essays that bring together the main ideas for the new technological revolution, at a level usefull for the expert and understandable for the lay man. As a Materials Scientist I enthusiastically recommend it.