Chris Binns

Dear reader

I am professor of Nanosience in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. This book has been a long time in the making. I was taken aback recently when I looked at the original proposal and found that it was written in Spring 2005. At the time there did not appear to be any books that covered the entire field of nanotechnology in a holistic manner written for the layman. To me, one of the most exciting aspects of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology is that they transcend the barriers between the mainstream scientific disciplines of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Engineering. Thus they provide new insights into the nature of matter and dazzling possibilities for new technology. So full of enthusiasm I put hand to keyboard and embarked on my project to fill this gap, with an original intention to finish in 18 months. Of course the entire sweep of the topic, including, as it does, all the mainstream sciences, is incredibly broad and the intention was to cover it with a relatively light touch to give the reader the 'feel' of what is exciting about the subject. Nanotechnology has a way of sucking you in however and there were so many things that I just couldn't resist including that the touch soon began to get heavier. At some stage in this process of increasing depth I decided to go a stage further and increase the academic level by including 'Advanced Reading Boxes' and some worked problems. This was so that the book could be used as an introductory text for University courses on Nanotechnology, which are becoming increasingly common. Indeed much of the material has been foisted on our own undergraduates at the University of Leicester where we run such a course. The book is still written so that the subject material is covered if one never ventures into these boxes but they provide additional depth for the serious student.

So, four and a half years later, here we are with a longer and more detailed book than I originally intended but in which, I hope, the original intention of giving the reader a holistic feel of the subject has not been lost. There are now many excellent books on Nanotechnology available at a range of different academic levels but I believe that this one still has the widest scope. Despite that, there are still holes, for example, the important areas of Nanomechanics and Nanofluidics, which I hope to fill in future editions. Whatever your use for the book I hope you enjoy it and get from it the excitement that is fundamental to the topic.

Chris Binns

December 2009.