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A
material structure assembled from a layer or cluster
of atoms with size of the order of nanometers. Interest in the physics of condensed
matter at size scales larger than that of atoms
and smaller than that of bulk solids (mesoscopic physics) has grown rapidly
since the 1970s, owing to the increasing realization that the properties of
these mesoscopic atomic ensembles are different from those of conventional
solids. As a consequence, interest in artificially assembling materials from nanometer-sized building blocks arose from
discoveries that by controlling the sizes in the range of 1-100 nm and the
assembly of such constituents it was possible to begin to alter and prescribe
the properties of the assembled nanostructures.
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