Nanometer

Nanometer

A nanometer is 10-9 meters or 10 angstroms or 0.001 micrometers. In 1951, this term was introduced and it is replaced by millimicron. Nanometer is used for very small lengths, and equals ten Ångström. It is often associated with the field of nanotechnology and the wavelength of light. Formerly, millimicron (symbol mµ) was used for the nanometre.

Nanometers are most useful for measuring the wavelengths of light (the visible spectrum is between 400 and 700 nanometers).

The size of the smallest microbes (200 to 300 nanometers), the size of features on an integrated circuit (130 nanometers) and the size of machines being designed for nanotechnology (less than 100 nanometers).