nano- [NA noh], nan-, nanno-, -nania

Having an abnormally or extremely small head.

1. An abnormally small head and underdeveloped brain.
2. An abnormally small head of a newborn with a congenitally small brain; microcephaly.

A computer circuit built and assembled on a single carbon nanotube: The nanocircuit is one-fifth the width of a human hair and can only be viewed under an electron microscope.

The nanocircuit is not designed to be used in a computer chip; instead, it is proof that allows a research team to test the switching speed of its design.

While using a nanocircuit, researchers have claimed that they could achieve a speed of 50 megahertz, hundreds of times slower than the gigahertz speeds of silicon processors seen in most personal computers; however, the researchers say the circuit is 100,000 times faster than any previously recorded for a device made with a carbon nanotube, and with continued refinement they hope to push speeds beyond those possible today.

A form of silicon used as a light-absorbing semiconductor in photovoltaic cells; similar to amorphous silicon (a-Si), in that it has an amorphous phase, but nc-Si has small grains of crystalline silicon within the amorphous phase.

A common metric unit of electric capacitance equal to 10^-9 farad, the SI unit of electric capacitance.

This unit was previously called the millimicrofarad (mµF).

Any fossil so small that it is near or below the limit of resolution of a light microscope.

1. One-billionth of a gram (10^-9 g).
2. One billionth (1/1,000,000,000) gram: NG.

Dwarfish; resembling a dwarf.

In microprogramming control organization, the decoded microinstructions stored in lower-level control memory.