There are the inherited genuinely barriers to overcome the strained understanding and consequently the design misleading features used for nanotechnology scaled and hierarchical physical matters, devices. Among them we would like to list some of the most hunted for, publicized and actually important technologies, those involving the multiscale nature of their functioning:
1) Nanocomposites, (the large number), especially with the multiphysics fields incorporated.
The way of understanding and modeling in composites (not necessarily nanocomposites) during the span of last 20-30 years shown the successes (?) of modeling and design possibility in composites as a one scale technology? The same way doomed to repeat the like nanocomposites area, with the one difference - much costlier are the research and development.
2) Photonic crystals.
3) Optical media with the NRI.
4) Giant Magnetoresistance composites.
5) Fuel Cells technology.
The modeling effort (experiments are also multiscaled should be, but that is the area close to dark matter like, right now in this field, at least) - the models, their conceptual approaches, their one scale homogeneous mathematics, are primitive and simply wrong for already many, many years.
The problem is that in these double- and triple porosity media of fuel cells there is need to combine and model the multiple physics of convective, diffusive, chemical, and electrostatic phenomena of flow, heat, mass, electrical transport and chemical reactions on the two- (or better three) scale in Heterogeneous media, not in homogeneous. Meanwhile, the conventional approaches, physics can not do this. And researchers just waste money and time.
6) Nanoscale Drug delivery methodologies.
Will be uploading into this and neighboring sub-sections some data with analysis of nanotech applications for education and for advertisement.