1: Fantastic Voyages -- New industrial revolution? -- Radical vision of nanotechnology -- Nano everywhere -- Into the nanoworld -- 2: Looking At The Nanoworld -- Light microscopy -- Seeing a single (big) molecule -- Other types of waves -- Electron microscope -- Imaging versus scattering -- Scanning probe microscopy -- Living in the nanoworld -- 3: Nanofabrication -- Introduction -- Transistor -- Making integrated circuits -- Moore's law and beyond -- Direct writing -- Cheaper, smaller, more curved-soft lithography -- Making things beside chips-MEMS and NEMS -- 4: Brownian Universe: Physics At The Nanoscale -- Introduction -- Fluid mechanics -- Flying nanobots? -- Brownian motion -- Stickiness -- Mechanical properties of small things -- Quantum effects -- Fantastic voyage revisited -- 5: Making Soft Machines -- Self-assembly -- Order from disorder -- Soap -- From shoe soles to opals -- Self-assembly and life -- Protein folding -- Nucleic acids -- Living soft machines -- Beyond simple self-assembly -- How molecules evolve -- Copying nature -- 6: Machines And Mechanisms -- Introduction -- Prime movers-engines large and small -- Mechanisms and machines -- Sensors and transducers -- 7: Wetware: Chemical Computing From Bacteria To Brains -- Introduction-Galvani and the chemical computer -- Reflex, instinct, and intelligence -- How E. Coli responds to its environment -- Principles of chemical computing -- Social life of cells -- Why big animals needed to develop a longer-ranged signaling mechanism -- Nervous energy -- How brains are different from computers -- 8: Single-Molecule Electronics -- Green goo catastrophe -- Dyes and photosynthesis -- Clean power for all-non-conventional photovoltaics -- Organic metals and plastic semiconductors -- Roll-up television screens and paint-on lasers -- Plastic logic -- Ups and downs of molecular electronics -- Single molecules as electronic devices -- Integrating single-molecule electronics -- 9: Our Nanotechnological Future -- Which way for nanotechnology? -- What should we worry about? -- Further reading -- Index.

From the Publisher: Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information with unparalleled power and precision. But is their vision realistic? Where is the science heading? As nanotechnology (a new technology that many believe will transform society in the next on hundred years) rises higher in the news agenda and popular consciousness, there is a real need for a book which discusses clearly the science on which this technology will be based. While it is most easy to simply imagine these tiny machines as scaled-down versions of the macroscopic machines we are all familiar with, the way things behave on small scales is quite different to the way they behave on large scales. Engineering on the nanoscale will use very different principles to those we are used to in our everyday lives, and the materials used in nanotechnology will be soft and mutable, rather than hard and unyielding. Soft Machines explains in a lively and very accessible manner why the nanoworld is so different to the macro-world which we are all familiar with. Why does nature engineer things in the way it does, and how can we learn to use these unfamiliar principles to create valuable new materials and artifacts which will have a profound effect on medicine, electronics, energy and the environment in the twenty-first century. With a firmer understanding of the likely relationship between nanotechnology and nature itself, we can gain a much clearer notion of what dangers this powerful technology may potentially pose, as well as come to realize that nanotechnology will have more in common with biology than with conventional engineering.