Nanotechnology is changing the world in a very big way, but at the atomic and sub-atomic level. Although the roots of nanotechnology can be traced back to more than a century ago, the last three decades have witnessed an explosion of nano-based technologies and products. This reference work examines the history, current status, and future directions of nanotechnology through an exhaustive search of the technical and scientific literature. The more than 4000 bibliographic citations it includes are carefully organized into core subject areas, and a geographic and subject index allows readers to quickly locate documents of interest.

Although a sense of the global reach and interest in nanotechnology can be gleaned from the reference sections of countless journal articles, conference papers, and books, this is the only reference work providing an in-depth global perspective that is ready-made for nanotechnology professionals and those interested in learning more about all things nanotechnology. Despite the abundance of online resources, there is still an urgent need for well-researched, well-presented, concise, and thematically organized reference works. Instead of relying on wiki pages, citation aggregators, and related websites, the author searched the databases and databanks of scholarly literature search providers such as EBSCO, ProQuest, PUBMED, STN International, and Thomson Reuters. In addition, he used select serials-related databases to account for pertinent documents from countries in which English is not the primary national language (i.e., China Online Journals, e-periodica, J-STAGE, and SciELO Brazil among others).