From Top-Down to Bottom-Up to Hybrid Nanotechnologies: Road to Nanodevices

Abstract

The current development and future prospects of nanotechnology are discussed with special emphasis on the pros and cons of the “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to nanotechnology, and the eventual merging of the two, at the scale of about 30 nm in feature size, to form a new “hybrid” technology. At the scale of about 3 nm in feature size, this “hybrid” technology will be challenged by the emerging “supramolecular” and “molecular” technologies epitomized by large-scale integration of single-molecule devices. Ultimately the “supramolecular” and “molecular” technologies will yield to “atomic” or “nuclear” technologies at the dimension of below 0.3 nm whereby single-atom, single-electron, single-spin, single-photon devices become realities.