What is nanofabrication

The design and manufacture of devices with dimensions measured in nanometers. Super-high-density microprocessors and memory chips are no more a distant dream with the fast paced technology of nanofabrication comming up. The atom-stoarage, with each data bit being stored in a a single atom. Carrying this further, a single atom might even be able to represent a byte or word of data. Nanofabrication has also caught the attention of the medical industry, the military, and the aerospace industry.

Methods of nanofabrication :

Scaling down integrated-circuit (IC) fabrication that has been standard since the 1970s, removing one atom at a time until the desired structure emerges.

The assembly of a chip atom-by-atom; this would resemble bricklaying. An extension of this is the notion that a chip might assemble itself atom-by-atom using programmable nanomachines. Finally, it has been suggested that a so-called biochip might be grown like a plant from a seed; the components would form by a process resembling cell division in living things.