nanotechnology

The science and engineering of materials and devices at the scale of roughly 1 to 100 nanometres. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometres thick.

At this scale materials can behave differently from the same material in bulk: stronger, more conductive, more reactive, or see-through. That is why nanotechnology turns up in electronics, medicine and neuroscience alike.

In medicine, its most widely used product so far is the lipid nanoparticle that carries mRNA in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. In neurotechnology, it is used to make electrodes thinner, softer, wireless or transparent, so that they disturb brain tissue less. The best-known example on this site is the transparent brain-computer interfaces.

Related terms: nanomaterial, nanoparticle, nanomedicine, neural interface, transparent brain-computer interfaces

Sources: Just How Small Is Nano? — U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative; Transparent Brain-Computer Interface Uses AI and Nanotech — Psychology Today (Cami Rosso, 24 Jan 2024)