Nano dictionary
The words that come up in nanotechnology news, explained in plain English. Each has its own page, linked to the technologies where it matters.
- Carbon nanotube
- A sheet of carbon atoms rolled into a tiny tube.
- Clinical trial
- A study that tests a treatment in people, in phases from small safety tests to large comparisons.
- Company-reported
- Something only the company says, with no independent source yet.
- DNA origami
- Folding DNA into chosen shapes a few nanometers in size.
- Graphene
- A sheet of carbon one atom thick.
- Lipid nanoparticle (LNP)
- A tiny bubble of fats that carries fragile medicines, like mRNA, into cells.
- Liposome
- A hollow bubble with a fatty skin, used to carry drugs through the body.
- Lithography
- Printing a chip's patterns onto a silicon wafer, usually with light.
- Metal-organic framework (MOF)
- A crystal built like scaffolding, full of tiny pores that can trap gases or water.
- Molecular machine
- A single molecule with parts that move when energy is added.
- mRNA
- Messenger RNA: instructions that tell a cell to make a particular protein.
- Nano check
- Our flag for whether the nanoscale really does the work, or "nano" is mostly a label.
- Nanobot
- A robot at the nanoscale. Mostly science fiction so far; see what has really been built.
- Nanometer (nm)
- One-billionth of a meter: the unit nanotechnology is measured in.
- Nanoparticle
- A particle only nanometers across, often made to carry a drug or give a material new properties.
- Nanoscale
- The size range from about one to a few hundred nanometers.
- Nanotechnology
- Engineering things at the scale of nanometers, where size and structure change how materials behave.
- Perovskite
- A family of crystals that can turn sunlight into electricity, often stacked on silicon solar cells.
- Process node ("2nm", "3nm")
- The name of a chipmaking generation. Despite the name, it is no longer the size of any one part.
- Quantum dot
- A semiconductor crystal so small that its size sets the color of light it gives off.
- Transistor
- A tiny electrical switch; chips contain billions of them.