What Are Nanodielectrics?

On a flight back from Europe in 1993, I read a magazine article entitled "The Power of Particles" (Lufthansa German Airlines 2/93, p. 54) and found it intriguing. I was working on high-voltage solid/gas interfaces and the concept of nanoscale seemed relevant to the phenomenology I was dealing with. In 1994 I also enjoyed and was inspired by John Lewis's seminal paper on dielectricity at the nanometric scale (nanometric dielectric; IEEE Trans. DEIS 2004).