Nanotechnology is at the heart of a great number of breakthroughs that will power the future economy.  Materials that will be manufactured using atomically precise technologies will offer performance and prices far superior to conventional materials.
 
For example, the state of the art in semiconductor technology is photolithographic manufacturing.  Photolithography uses light to remove material on a chip wafer, layer by layer.  It has been done that way for decades even as the chip density has increased and chip size has decreased.