The use of nanotechnology in electronic components is referred to as nanoelectronics. The scale of these components is sometimes just a few nanometers. The smaller electronic components become, however, the more difficult they are to produce.

Inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical properties play a major role in the workings of these devices. Nanoelectronics encompasses a vast range of devices and materials with the common feature that they are so tiny that physical forces change the materials'properties on a nanoscale. New phenomena emerge at the nanoscale, taking priority over macro-world phenomena. Tunneling and atomistic disorder are two quantum effects that dominate the field.

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The smallest working transistor today is 7 nanometers long, which is over 1.4 million times smaller than the first transistors installed in 1947. (1 cm equals 10 million nanometers). These initiatives also resulted in billion-transistor processors, in which 20 billion transistor-based circuits are combined into a single chip once industry adopts 7nm manufacturing techniques.

Nanoelectronic Devices

Nanoelectronic devices, in addition to transistors, play a role in data storage (memory). Spintronics – the research and application of electron spin and its related magnetic moment in solid-state systems, as well as electric charge – is already a well-established technology.

Optoelectronics is a branch of electronics that deals with light

Optoelectronic devices, or electronic devices that source, track, and monitor light, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Optical communications that are highly energy-efficient (lower heat generation and power usage) are becoming increasingly relevant because they have the ability to solve one of our information age's biggest problems: energy consumption.

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Materials such as nanofibers (see, for example, "Light-emitting nanofibers pave the way for optoelectronic textiles") and carbon nanotubes have been used in nanotechnology, and graphene, in particular, has shown exciting potential for optoelectronic devices.

Displays

Organic LEDs, electronic paper and other instruments that display still images, and Field Emission Displays are the three broad categories of display technologies. Read our special section on Nanotechnology in Displays for more details.

Wearable electronics

As evidenced by the rapidly expanding variety of smart watches, fitness bands, and other innovative, next-generation health tracking devices such as electronic stick-on tattoos, the age of wearable electronics has arrived.

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Wearable electronics can go far beyond very small electronic devices or wearable, flexible computers, if current research is any indication.

These devices will not only be embedded in textile substrates, but an electronics device or system which eventually become the fabric itself. Electronic textiles (e-textiles) would make it possible to design and manufacture a new generation of garments with distributed sensors and electronic functions.

Such e-textiles would be revolutionary in their ability to sense, act, store, emit, and move – think biomedical monitoring functions or new man-machine interfaces – while ideally leveraging an existing low-cost textile manufacturing infrastructure (see, for example, "wearing single-walled carbon nanotube electronics on your skin," "temporary tattoo to track glucose levels," or "graphene nanosensor t").

Nanoelectronics for Energy

Solar cells and supercapacitors are two examples of nanoelectronics applications in energy generation and storage. Read our in-depth sections on Nanotechnology in Energy and Graphene Nanotechnology in Energy to learn more.
Electronics at the molecular level

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Unlike nanoelectronics, which involves scaling down devices to the nanoscale, molecular electronics is concerned with electronic processes that occur in molecular structures found in nature, such as photosynthesis and signal transduction.

The goal of molecular electronics is to gain a fundamental understanding of charge transport through molecules, which is guided by the vision of molecular circuits enabling small, fast, and energy-efficient computers.

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