Abstract: Nanotechnology began to emerge 20 years ago, and has been developing tremendously. The applications of nanotechnology include biomedical studies. This article reviews the concept of nanotechnology and nanoscale material. Several advantages of nanotechnology for cosmetics and pharmaceutics are discussed and the focus is nanotechnology for whitening and anti-aging cosmetic's applications. The features of loading the ingredients of whitening or anti-aging cosmetics into nanoparticles, such as solid lipid nanoparticles(SLN) and nanostructured lipid carriers(NLC) and examples of the cosmetic products on the market are reviewed.

Key words: nanotechnology, skin whitening, anti-aging, cosmetics