Some predict that the potentially rich opportunities in this field may trigger a nanotechnology initiative in the federal budget request for Fiscal Year 2001. Other program areas with potential for development of environmentally related nanotechnologies, says Newton, are the Small Business Innovative Research Program and the Superfund Basic Research Program. Nanotechnology first received broad attention in 1989 when investigators at IBM used a scanning tunneling microscope to spell out the company's initials with 35 xenon atoms on a piece of nickel, showing that they could precisely position individual atoms. Nevertheless, the concept of working in the nano-range existed long before IBM's success. Although nature holds millions of years of experience in nanotechnology, this realm is an entirely new world to human technology.
Nanotechnology means more than making a smaller version of something.
It can mean making something entirely new, something with unheard-of properties, because a material's characteristics can change dramatically depending on the organization of atoms. In some cases, nanotechnology may involve building things one atom at a time. Investigators could, say, use an atomic-force microscope to pick up one atom and place it just so, similar to what the IBM researchers did with the xenon atoms. Nevertheless, nanotechnology also involves the mass movement of many atoms through processes such as self-assembly. When a chemist creates a compound, for instance, all of the components are dumped together, processed in some way, and out pops the desired final product.