alt Hacker News> we have very little to show in a way of progress. What happened?
Our semiconductors have had features below 100 nm for a while (actual features, not just process node names), so that's been wildly successful.
Why nanofabrication hasn't been as commercially successful outside of semiconductors is a much harder question to answer.
Yes, of course the etching on silicon process has been refined to a level nobody thought possible. But this is more like a CNC process at a tiny level. What we don't have is additive manufacturing at nano scale. The nano assembler that Drexler and Feynman thought were possible is not panning out.