Nanowires for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Nanoscience offers the promise of producing revolutionary advances in many areas of technology, ranging from electronics and computing to biology and medicine, and thus may impact in a substantial way our future lives. This presentation will provide an overview to the bottom-up paradigm for nanotechnology enabled using nanowire building blocks. First, the growth of nanowires, with composition controlled down to the atomic scale, their fundamental electronic properties, and the assembly of integrated structures will be described. Second, studies of nanowire based electronic circuits and nanocomputing systems will be critically examined. Third, nanowire devices configured as electrically-based biosensors will be discussed with an emphasis on disease detection and ultimate sensitivity limits of these nanodevices, as well as the potential linkage to biological information processing. Challenges and goals that must be met to realize these and other nanotechnologies in the future will be discussed.