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Technical Briefs |
1
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, 3400 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA 19104;
2
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 310-C Abramson Pediatric Research Center, 34th St. and Civic Center Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19104;
aauthor for correspondence: fax 215-662-7529, e-mail kricka{at}mail.med.upenn.edu)
This all-language literature survey categorizes and lists books, book chapters, reviews, editorials, papers, abstracts, and patents on the topic of nanotechnology that have been published up to the middle of 2001. It can serve as a convenient entry point into the nanotechnology literature for those wishing to gain an insight into the scope and diversity of this important and rapidly expanding branch of science. The database has been compiled from searches of OVID Medline, INSPEC, BIOSIS, PubMed, various patent databases, and the personal databases of members the IFCC Working Group on Nanotechnology. The listing of references for each of the 19 categories can be found at Clinical Chemistry Online (www.clinchem.org/content/vol48/issue4/).
The science of nanotechnology "is concerned with materials and systems whose structures and components exhibit novel and significantly improved physical, chemical and biological properties, phenomena and processes because of their small nanoscale size. Structural features in the range of 
10-9 to 10-7 m (1 to 100 nanometers) determine important changes as compared to the behavior of isolated molecules (1 nanometer) or of bulk materials" (1). More generally, nanotechnology can be defined as any technique able to work at a submicron scale. It includes molecular nanotechnological processes in which devices are constructed atom by atom or molecule by molecule using "assemblers" that facilitate the precise handling and positioning of atomic or molecular building blocks (the so-called, "bottom-up" approach to fabrication).
The seminal lecture by Richard Feynman in 1959, entitled "There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom", is widely acknowledged as a key event in the development of the field of nanotechnology (2). The field of nanotechnology was further enabled by the many advances in microscopic techniques that permit atomic resolution imaging of surfaces and manipulation of atoms and molecules (3). The current range of scanning probe techniques can be traced back to the work of Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer on the scanning tunneling microscope at IBM (Zurich) in 1981 for which they were awarded the 1986 Nobel prize in physics (4). Additional impetus to this nascent field was the publication of the book, Engines of Creation, by K. Eric Drexler in 1986, which explored and advocated the possible applications of nanotechnology (5). Forty years after Feynman’s initial theoretical propositions, the field of nanotechnology has progressed to real examples of devices and objects (6). The current range of nanofabricated objects includes nanorods (e.g., nanometer-diameter whiskers of silicon carbide); nanotubes (hollow nanometer-wide tubes of carbon atoms bonded in a graphite-like structure, also called microtubules or fibrils); nanopores; nanoparticles; nanocrystals; nanowires; and quantum dots [droplets of electric charge produced in a nanometer-sized piece ("dot") of semiconductor]. It is anticipated that materials and devices produced using nanotechnology will have a major impact on many aspects of our daily life, e.g., carbon nanotubes are stronger than steel and hold great promise for applications where light weight and strength are a premium (7). Already, nanotubes and nanowires are being used to build electronic display panels (8), and more generally, nanoelectronics is being pursued as a means to produce smaller and faster electronic devices (9)(10)(11)(12). Nanoparticles are finding applications as drug carriers in therapy (13)(14)(15)(16) and as labels in analytical methods (17)(18)(19). Finally, nanotubes are being exploited as probes of molecular structure at the single-molecule level, in the so-called scanometric approach to analysis (20)(21). The influence of nanotechnology on routine analytical methods is difficult to predict, but the recent advances in scanometric methods coupled with the rapid progress in nanoparticle labels suggest an important future for nanotechnology in the clinical laboratory.
We divided the nanotechnology literature into 19 categories and listed documents in each category in chronological order and in alphabetical order of first author within each year. Table 1
provides a list of key words for each category to provide a more detailed view of the scope of each of these sections. In the interest of simplicity, citations have been assigned to just one category. A more detailed and comprehensive listing of references for particular topics can be obtained by searching the online database (including title, keywords, and abstracts), using the appropriate keyword or keyword combinations. We have provided the total database and the database for the 19 categories for the convenience of the user [available through Clinical Chemistry Online (www.clinchem.org/content/vol48/issue4/)]. Please note that in many cases we have relied on the accuracy of the abstraction service for the citation details. The Internet is also a rich source of information on nanotechnology (e.g., seehttp://www.foresight.org/ andhttp://itri.loyola.edu/nanobase/), and a selection of nanotechnology-related Internet sites is listed at Clinical Chemistry Online (www.clinchem.org/content/vol48/issue4/).
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Acknowledgments
This compilation is based in part on a survey undertaken by the IFCC Working Group on Nanotechnology, chaired by Dr Larry J. Kricka. Members of the Working Group are listed in the data supplement that accompanies this article at Clinical Chemistry Online (http://www.clinchem.org/content/vol48/issue4/).
References
The following articles in journals at HighWire Press have cited this article:
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  L. J. Kricka, T. Joos, and P. Fortina Protein Microarrays: A Literature Survey Clin. Chem., December 1, 2003; 49(12): 2109 - 2109. [Full Text] [PDF]
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L. J. Kricka and P. Fortina Microchips: An All-Language Literature Survey Including Books and Patents Clin. Chem., September 1, 2002; 48(9): 1620 - 1622. [Full Text] [PDF]
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