Nanotechnology and Nanoscience – From Past Breakthroughs to Future Prospects

Nanoscience and nanotechnology represent an increasingly important part of our lives. Their achievements are already proving to be useful in everyday life, as well as in the fields of medicine, energetics, environmental protection, transport and electronics along with information technology. In this paper, the development of nanotechnology is presented through its major breakthroughs. A special section is reserved for the development in the field of microelectronics, which is facing numerous challenges, due to downsizing of devices to the nanometre level. Current situation in microelectronics industry and predictions for the next few years are presented. Furthermore, the use of nanotechnology and future prospects for all abovementioned fields are described. The last part of this paper is devoted to the field of electronics and information technology, where some potential nanotechnological solutions for the challenges of microelectronics are implied. The use of carbon nanotubes in logic circuits and memory applications is presented. The basic principle of single-electron transistor is also described. Basic concepts of the use of spintronics in magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) structures are explained. Memristor is also presented as an important future prospect. However, the review paper focuses only on positive effects of the use of nanotechnology, and thus does not discuss its possible negative impact on public health and environment.