Artikelomschrijving

Nanoscience is not physics, chemistry, engineering or biology. It is all of them, and it is time for a text that integrates the disciplines. This is such a text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in the sciences. The consequences of smallness and quantum behaviour are well known and described Richard Feynmans visionary essay Theres Plenty of Room at the Bottom (which is reproduced in this book). Another, critical, but thus far neglected, aspect of nanoscience is the complexity of nanostructures. Hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms make up systems that are complex enough to show what is fashionably called emergent behaviour. Quite new phenomena arise from rare configurations of the system. Examples are the Kramers theory of reactions (Chapter 3), the Marcus theory of electron transfer (Chapter 8), and enzyme catalysis, molecular motors, and fluctuations in gene expression and splicing, all covered in the final Chapter on Nanobiology. The book is divided into three parts.