National Center for Nanoscience and Technology

Introduction

Nanoscience and nanotechnology stand at the intersection of basic sciences and integrate with multiple research areas. With broad applications in, for example, energy, biomedicine, information technology devices, and green manufacturing, nano research has become a driving force for economic and social development.

To advance nano research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Ministry of Education of China established the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) in 2003. As the national core center for nanoscience and nanotechnology, as well as a committed member of the global nano research community, NCNST has a responsibility to identify the field’s key challenges and to forecast future trends.

In celebration of its 20-year anniversary, NCNST in cooperation with Science/AAAS (www.science.org) plan to publish an advertorial in an October issue of Science magazine. This advertorial will present up to 20 Fundamental Questions on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, spanning from basic theories to advanced applications.

We hope to ignite curiosity and deeper investigation by the act of asking profound questions. Therefore, we are soliciting input from nano researchers around the globe. The collected ideas will be reviewed and edited into a final set of questions for publication.

Contributors will be acknowledged in print.

Scope

Questions of interest cover all aspects of nanoscience and nanotechnology, ranging from basic theories to advanced applications. What do you think are the most fundamental / profound questions in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology? Why do you think so?

Here are some examples:

Q: How will nanotechnology impact drug development in the era of “smart” healthcare?
A: Nanomedicines have already showed significant impact on modern drug development. Early-generation nanomedicines, such as liposomal chemotherapeutics and albumin-conjugated drugs, have made important advances through improved drug bioavailability, optimized pharmacokinetics and reduced toxicity. Recently, mRNA vaccines and injectable medical nanorobots have signaled the emergence of a new generation of therapeutics with personalized or intelligent elements. With the rapid development of novel drug delivery techniques based on nanomaterials and biomaterials, the future of pharmaceuticals may be limited only by imagination.

Q: How to achieve optoelectronic interconnect that overcomes the diffraction limit?
A: Compared with electronics, photons have many significant advantages like fast speed, low energy consumption and high capacity, and are expected to greatly improve the information processing capabilities. Therefore, the optoelectronic interconnect is considered to be the key technology for building the next generation of high-efficiency, high-integration, low-energy photoelectric devices. However, the transmission of light is limited by the optical diffraction limit, hindering the nanoscale regulation of photons which can be easily realized in electrons system. The idea of achieving optoelectronic interconnect that overcomes the diffraction limit thus is urgently needed.

Q: Is there a unified theory to bridge the continuum theory and molecular-level quantum mechanics?
A: At macro-scale, continuum theories such as Newton’s equation and Maxwell’s equations have achieved great success by considering the described object as a uniform/ continuum medium. At a molecular level, the structures and properties of atoms, molecules as well as nuclei and elementary particles have been well described by quantum mechanics.
In the gap between macro-scale and molecular scale is the nanometer scale. Nanoscale research is typically conducted through two main theoretical approaches. One is a top-down strategy that is based on a modified continuum theory in addition to some amendment items, which brings a certain reduction in precision and increases in uncertainty. The other is a bottom-up approach that is based on the Schr？dinger equation, which brings increased model fidelity with added complexity and tremendous computational cost.
Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. At present, scientists await a unified theoretical framework to bridge the gap.

We encourage you to put down your question(s) and interpretive abstract(s) – a short paragraph to help us better understand what you mean. *

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Please submit your solicitation(s) by May 21, 2023.