MasterStanF2k

Which engineering is this?
Is this easier than any other forms of engineering?
What does this area of study need proficieny in - I imagine biology?

steevee

Nanotechnology is not a sub-discipline within an engineering discipline. It is a broad field that encompasses all other engineering fields. Most, if not all, engineering disciplines can use methods of nanotechnology to create new solutions to current problems by miniaturizing the tools and processes.

Basically, nanotechnology is engineering at the molecular level.

I was told that physics and chemistry are good degrees to get if you want to do research in nanotechnoloy. However, I don't know what's a good engineering degree for nanoengineering. I would like to know which engineering discipline has the most use of nanotechnology right now (I assume ECE because of computer chip manufacturing, since circuits are already in the range of the definition of nanotechnology).

MasterStanF2k

Well, is the focus called material engineering or something.. is there a given name to it?

tmf

it's my understanding that nanotech as a whole can incorporate many fields of study including physics (probably condensed matter physics mostly), chemistry (physical chemistry), chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science and others. The innovations created by nanotechnology also have many implications in the world of medicine and computers.

raneksin

Nanotechnology can be considered a very large branch of materials science.

aibarr

...throwing my two cents into the pot, civil engineering's starting to incorporate some nanotech into things like crack propagation arrest, so if we can use it, I think anybody can.

dr_reynolds

A lot of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers are researching in Nanotechnology.

morfinx

As far as nanotech goes, you can choose to specialize in Microelectronics/Microsystems within EE/CE discpline. This includes things like Gigascale Integration (fitting billions of transistors onto a small chip), Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS, in my opinion is one of the next big things), and Microelectronic System Packaging etc. But nanotech is also applicable to other fields as well.