"... In this article, the state of the art of nanotechnology will be analysed by presenting available data on nanotechnology markets and market projections, on jobs, on companies and other organisations active in nanotechnology, on public and private funding, including Venture Capital funding, on patents, and on scientific publications. The data have been collected from publicly available sources and will be cited accordingly. The author cannot take the full responsibility for their accuracy or trueness. Especially in the case of market data, which can only be estimates, the data differ very much depending on definition, source, methodology and purpose of collection and presentation. The author sought to overcome this problem by not relying on a single source and by comparing different sources before selecting them for further analyses.
The purpose of the analyses is twofold: On the one hand, nanotechnology and its subareas will be analysed in order to present the state of the art, to identify most promising fields and to predict future developments. On the other hand, the analyses will shed a light on the contribution of nanotechnology to economic and social goals of the European Union such as competitiveness, economic growth and employment by focusing on Europe in comparison with its world competitors, mainly the United States, Japan and emerging nano-powers such as China, India and Russia. ..."

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