Nanotechnology: I Love the Stuff

Nanotechnology is engineering on a very small scale: atom by atom.

One critical consideration in nanotech is that it works at a scale quantum mechanical effects are important.

I love this stuff. I am of the opinion that contemporary science is much too devoted to distinctions among layers of reality defined by scale. So ... physics deals with atoms, chemistry with molecules, biology with organisms. Each presumes its own set of laws and generally ignores rthe laws of the level below it, aside from general hand-waving acknowledgements when diplomatic.

Yet the walls among the disciplines are falling down.

That is a subject for other days, it simply explains why I find nanotechnology -- not so much science as a branch of engineering, operating on the border between physics and chemistry.

Only days ago a team of researchers from two great universities, the University of Toronto on the one hand and Rice University on the other, reported the first measurements of the ultra-low-friction behavior of a material known as magnetene.

Read here for more.

Magnetene: Graphene-like 2D material leverages quantum effects to achieve ultra-low friction (phys.org)

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