Nano-science is the study of phenomena and manipulation of materials at atomic, molecular, and macro-molecular scales.

Nano-engineering is the design, characterization, production, and application of nano-science.

Working at the 1 - 100 nanometer scale.

Surfaces and Interfaces plat a major role.

• A 10 nm particle has >20% of its atoms on its surface
• Potential for greater control of chemical reactions

Quantum size effects become important.

• Material dimensions similar to quantum mechanical wavelengths (quantum dots)

Information Processing #

What is different from that at the large scale?

• more interface / higher surface area
• physical laws interact differently

Information Processing

• internet
• data centers
• super computers
• cloud storage

Transistor

• a fundamental building block of digital devices
• first invented in 1947 at Bell Labs (Bardeen, Braltain, Schosky); is now the integrate circuit (IC)

Moore’s Law

• transistor count per IC doubles very tow years

Use of Transistor

• first used in solid state amplifier
• later became a switch (“on” versus “off”)

Transistors

Digital Age

• information is stored and processed digitally
• represented as a binary number (bits)
• codes / conventions to represent
  • ASCII characters: bytes (8 bits) $2^8$
  • 0100 0001 = 65 (base-10)
  • 0100 0010 = 66 (base-10)

Analog Signal -> Music

• better recording
  • more bits
  • faster sampling or more bins

Transistor and Logic #

1101 -> $(1 * 2^3) + (1 * 2^2) + (0 * 2^1) + (1 * 2^0)$ = 8 + 4 + 0 + 1 = 13

Transistor is a solid state switch

Logic Gates

• devices that implement a truth table

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