nanovolume

Nanovolume is a nanoscale unit of volume defined as the volume of a cube with side length of one nanometer. In numeric terms, it equals 1 cubic nanometer (nm^3), which is 1×10^-27 cubic meters or about 1×10^-24 liters. It is not an official SI unit, but it is used informally in nanotechnology, materials science, and nanofluidics to convey the extreme confinement and the minute scale of nanoscale structures.

Nanovolume is typically employed to describe the size of tiny spaces, such as nanopores, nanofabricated channels, and confined fluid volumes within nanoscale devices. It provides a convenient reference when discussing geometry and volume at the nanometer scale, where conventional units like liters or cubic meters become unwieldy for expressing very small quantities.

As a rough scale reference, the number of molecules that fit into a nanovolume depends on the material. For liquid water at room temperature and standard density (~1 g/cm^3), the volume of 1 nm^3 contains on the order of 30 to 35 water molecules. In solids or denser media, the actual constituent count per nm^3 will differ according to molecular packing and density. Thus nanovolume serves as a qualitative gauge of size, not a fixed, substance-specific quantity.

See also: nanometer, cubic nanometer, nanofluidics, nanopore, nanoscale.