But to see was just the first step. Nanoscale is three orders of magnitude smaller than most of today's human-made devices. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Let's look at it another way. Nanostructures are at the confluence of the smallest human-made devices and the large molecules of living systems.
Individual atoms are a few tenths of a nanometer.
To use another comparison, DNA molecules are about 2.5 nanometers wide. Biological cells, such as red blood cells, have diameters in the range of thousands of nanometers. Natural meets artificial in this nanochip created by Stanford University engineers and scientists. Nerve axons can regrow through the tiny grate in the center of the square, a silicon membrane. The chip then modifies and distributes the impulses, simulating the electrical activity of a normal nerve synapse.