The state of research after 25 years ofNanotechnology

In 1990 the transistor was big—not just hugely prevalent in day-to-day devices but literally large in size compared with present day counterparts. Still, as Christoph Gerber describes in our latest Nanotechnology Discussions podcast [1], with transistor footprints decreasing every two years as described in Moore's law, by 1990 the electronics industry saw itself broaching new territory: nanotechnology. Atoms had made their debut as real-world observables with the first scanning probe microscopes only a few years previously, prompted by efforts to understand how physical systems behave at this scale. And in this heady climate of burgeoning nanoscale innovations Nanotechnology published its first issue, the world's first academic journal dedicated to nanoscale science and technology. This year the journal publishes its 25th volume and to celebrate we have commissioned a special issue presenting a snapshot of developments leading some of the most active areas in the field today [2].