Nanotechnology is rarely the most practical way to probe very small things. People have been able to infer molecular structures since the 19th century. Modern molecular biology/biochemistry makes use of electron microscope, fluorescent microscopy, and sequencing-based assays, among other techniques.
Nanotechnology is technology that has parts operating in the range of between 1 nm and 100 nm, so actually this technology is nanotechnology—as is much of the rest of biotechnology.
You’re right that the usefulness of non-biotech based nanotechnology (what people typically think of as nanotechnology) hasn’t been used much—that’s largely due to it being a nascent area. I expect that to change over the coming decades as the technology improves. It might not, though, as biotech based nanotechnology might stay in the lead.
Technology to do something like this is already being developed, but it’s not nanotechnology: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.3151
Nanotechnology is rarely the most practical way to probe very small things. People have been able to infer molecular structures since the 19th century. Modern molecular biology/biochemistry makes use of electron microscope, fluorescent microscopy, and sequencing-based assays, among other techniques.
Nanotechnology is technology that has parts operating in the range of between 1 nm and 100 nm, so actually this technology is nanotechnology—as is much of the rest of biotechnology.
You’re right that the usefulness of non-biotech based nanotechnology (what people typically think of as nanotechnology) hasn’t been used much—that’s largely due to it being a nascent area. I expect that to change over the coming decades as the technology improves. It might not, though, as biotech based nanotechnology might stay in the lead.