Scanning Tunneling Microscopy was invented by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer in 1982, which receive the Nobel Prize in 1986. After the first meeting in 1985, the STM conference was first started in Santiago de Compostela (Spain, 1986), and subsequently in Oxnard (USA, 1987), Oxford (UK, 1988), Oarai (Japan, 1989), Baltimore (USA, 1990), Interlaken (Switzerland 1991), Beijing (China, 1993), Snow Mass (USA, 1995), Hamburg (Germany, 1997), Seoul (Korea, 1999), Vancouver (Canada, 2001), Eindhoven (The Netherlands,2003), and Sapporo (Japan, 2005). The international Nano conferences grew out of these international STM meetings. The first Nano meeting was held jointly with STM in Baltimore (USA, 1990), and subsequently in Moscow (Russia, 1993), Denver (USA, 1994), Beijing (China, 1996), Birmingham (UK, 1998), Boston (USA, 2000), Malmö (Sweden, 2002), and Venice (Italy, 2004).

Nano9 and STM’06 were formally combined as the ICN+T in Basel, Switzerland in 2006, with the ICN+T held again in Stockholm, Sweden (ICN+T 2007), at Keystone, Colorado, US (ICN+T 2008) and this year 2010 in Beijing, China (ICN+T 2010).