Quantum phenomena in Nanotechnology

摘要

Twenty years ago the Institute of Physics launched the journal Nanotechnology from its publishing house based in the home town of Paul Dirac, a legendaryfigure in the development of quantum mechanics at the turn of the last century. Atthe beginning of the 20th century, the adoption of quantum mechanicaldescriptions of events transformed the existing deterministic world view. But inmany ways it also revolutionised the progress of research itself. For the first timesince the 17th century when Francis Bacon established inductive reasoning as themeans of advancing science from fact to axiom to law, theory was progressingahead of experiments instead of providing explanations for observations that hadalready been made. Dirac's postulation of antimatter through purely theoreticalinvestigation before its observation is the archetypal example of theory leadingthe way for experiment. The progress of nanotechnology and the development oftools and techniques that enabled the investigation of systems at the nanoscalebrought with them many fascinating observations of phenomena that could onlybe explained through quantum mechanics, first theoretically deduced decadespreviously.