Chapter 22.4 - Nanotechnology And Nanomanufacturing - NanoManufacturing-Going Beyond The Engineering Process

Traditionally, manufacturing is attributed to the engineering field. For nanomanufacturing, we must
go beyond engineering. Once we approach the atomic-scale precision and control, fundamental
physics and chemistry have to be enrolled and correctly understood. Nanoscale manufacturing is
multidisciplinary and cross field, involving but not limited to mechanics, electrical engineering,
physics, chemistry, biology, and biomedical engineering. The future view of nanomanufacturing is the
integration of engineering, science, and biology. This complex task requires not only innovative
research and development themes, but also a new education system for training future scientists and
engineers.

To many people, nanotechnology may be understood as a process of ultraminiaturization. In fact,
the trend in product miniaturization will require new process measurement and control systems that
can span across millimeter-, micrometer-, and nanometer-size scales while accounting for the associated
physics that govern the device and environment interaction at each specific size scale. This
will require new standardized architecture definitions that support multiple physics-based models
and new computational representations that allow for seamless transition and traversing through
these various models. Nanotechnology is much more than a miniaturization.

The future advance from microelectronics to nanoelectronics is not just in making the line thinner
and thinner and approaching 10 nm, but possibly a change in materials system and approach.
Steel was the most important material in the first industrial revolution, silicon is the most important
material for the second industrial revolution, the question for us now is what will be the material for
the third industrial revolution?

Acknowledgement

The results reviewed in this paper were partially contributed from my group members and collaborators:
Xiang Yang Kong, Ph. Avouris, and Shouheng Sun. Research supported by NSF, NASA, and
DARPA.