Hi Shaun
Just had a quick read.
As have mentioned before nanotechnology is just one of those terms which have been used to describe many things small.
It was originally coined to describe futuristic tiny robots which would build together to form greater structures, bit like Transformers !
Apparently this technology is still science fiction but others have used the word to describe their own products.
In science terms nano means 10 to the power of -9 and in metric terms this is the size of most molecules, hense the nanotechnology angle.
Not sure whether the sort of technology described in the article would be much use on carpets, especially in high wear areas.
Cheers
Doug