Few terms have been more commonly used and abused in the scientific literature than nano.
However, if one is able to sift through the vast amounts of nano literature, there are also numerous reports that are of both academic and commercial importance. This is particularly true for the field of catalysis in which rapid progress is being made that has transformed this once black art into a science, which is understood on a molecular and even atomic level. These gains have been particularly driven by the fields of surface and nanomolecular science with improvements in instrumentation and experimental techniques that have facilitated scientists’ observations on the nano-size scale.