Sustainable Nanotechnology

3 Opportunities and Challenges for Green and Eco‐Friendly Nanotechnology in Twenty‐First Century

P. Sreeramana Aithal¹ and Shubhrajyotsna Aithal²

¹ College of Management & Commerce, Srinivas University, Mangalore, India

² Faculty, College of Engineering & Technology, Srinivas University, Mangalore, India

3.1 Introduction

Identifying problems as challenges and involving in solving them is the nature of innovators in society. In this process, the technology is used as a tool. Most of the current problems of human beings related to basic needs, advanced wants, and dreamy desires can be solved using twenty‐first century technologies, which include nanotechnology (NT) and information communication and computation technology (ICCT) [1]. Though the word NT is first used by a Japanese Professor Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo University of Science in 1974 conference to describe the characteristics of a thin film of the order of a nanometer, the idea is originally proposed by Richard Feynman in 1959 in his speech on there's plenty of space at the bottom at the American Physical Society meeting. Thereafter in 1981, Eric Drexler independently used the word NT in his scholarly publication. The discovery of scanning tunneling microscope in 1980 and the invention of fullerenes in 1985, supported for the initial development of NT. In 1986, Eric Drexler published a book on Engine of Creation and Nanosystems, which proposed the idea of nanoscale devices using NT. Further development of semiconductor ...