Health significance of nanotechnologies

Nanoscience and nanotechnologies represent a field of study that is currently attracting a great deal of attention. The prefix ‘nano’ refers to the nanometre (nm), one billionth of a metre. The unusual mechanical, optical, electrical, and magnetic properties exhibited by materials with dimensions in the range 100 nm down to around 0.1 nm (the size of a single atom) can differ markedly from the properties of the same materials at larger dimensions. In recent years, researchers have become increasingly adept at manipulating the shape and size of materials at the nanometre scale and have therefore been able to study and exploit these unusual properties.