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The next few paragraphs provide a brief introduction to the
core concepts of molecular nanotechnology, followed by links to further
reading.
Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products
depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal
we can make diamond. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a few other
trace elements) we can make computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt,
water and air we can make potatoes.
Todays manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level. Casting,
grinding, milling and even lithography move atoms in great thundering statistical
herds. It's like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks with boxing gloves
on your hands. Yes, you can push the LEGO blocks into great heaps and pile
them up, but you can't really snap them together the way you'd like.
In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves.
We'll be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature
easily, inexpensively and in most of the ways permitted by the laws of physics.
This will be essential if we are to continue the revolution in computer
hardware beyond about the next decade, and will also let us fabricate an
entire new generation of products that are cleaner, stronger, lighter, and
more precise.
It's worth pointing out that the word "nanotechnology"
has become very popular and is used to describe many types of research where
the characteristic dimensions are less than about 1,000 nanometers. For
example, continued improvements in lithography have resulted in line widths
that are less than one micron: this work is often called "nanotechnology."
Sub-micron lithography is clearly very valuable (ask anyone who uses a computer!)
but it is equally clear that conventional lithography will not let us build
semiconductor devices in which individual dopant atoms are located at specific
lattice sites. Many of the exponentially improving trends in computer hardware
capability have remained steady for the last 50 years. There is fairly widespread
belief that these trends are likely to continue for at least another several
years, but then conventional lithography starts to reach its limits.
If we are to continue these trends we will have to develop a new manufacturing
technology which will let us inexpensively build computer systems with mole
quantities of logic elements that are molecular in both size and precision
and are interconnected in complex and highly idiosyncratic patterns. Nanotechnology
will let us do this.
When it's unclear from the context whether we're using the specific definition
of "nanotechnology" (given here) or the broader and more inclusive definition
(often used in the literature), we'll use the terms "molecular nanotechnology"
or "molecular manufacturing."
Whatever we call it, it should let us
- Get essentially every atom in the right place.
- Make almost any structure consistent with the laws of physics that we
can specify in molecular detail.
- Have manufacturing costs not greatly exceeding the cost of the required
raw materials and energy.
There are two more concepts commonly associated with nanotechnology:
Clearly, we would be happy with any method that simultaneously achieved the
first three objectives. However, this seems difficult without using some form
of positional assembly (to get the right molecular parts in the right places)
and some form of massive parallelism (to keep the costs down).
The need for positional assembly implies an interest in molecular robotics, e.g., robotic devices that are molecular both in their
size and precision. These molecular scale positional devices are likely
to resemble very small versions of their everyday macroscopic counterparts.
Positional assembly is frequently used in normal macroscopic manufacturing
today, and provides tremendous advantages. Imagine trying to build a bicycle
with both hands tied behind your back! The idea of manipulating and positioning
individual atoms and molecules is still new and takes some getting used
to. However, as Feynman said in a classic
talk in 1959: "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not
speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom." We need
to apply at the molecular scale the concept that has demonstrated its effectiveness
at the macroscopic scale: making parts go where we want by putting
them where we want!
One robotic arm assembling molecular parts is going to take a long time to
assemble anything large — so we need lots of robotic arms: this is what
we mean by massive parallelism. While earlier proposals achieved massive parallelism
through self replication,
today's "best guess" is that future molecular manufacturing systems
will use some form of convergent
assembly. In this process vast numbers of small parts are assembled by vast
numbers of small robotic arms into larger parts, those larger parts are assembled
by larger robotic arms into still larger parts, and so forth. If the size of
the parts doubles at each iteration, we can go from one nanometer parts (a few
atoms in size) to one meter parts (almost as big as a person) in only 30 steps.
More Information
News and topical discussions
Books
These and other books can be ordered from The Foresight Institute's book store
- The best technical introduction to this area is:
- A technical introduction to medical applications of nanotechnology:
- Further reading::
- Unbounding the Future, by K. Eric Drexler, Chris Peterson and Gayle Pergamit (Quill 1991) provides
a non-technical discussion of what nanotechnology should let us do, using
technically feasible scenarios to clearly illustrate the possibilities.
Now available on the web!
- Nano! by Ed Regis (Little, Brown 1995) is an engaging and entertaining book
that describes the researchers involved in this area, particularly Drexler,
and the reactions of different members of the scientific community to
the concept.
Journals, publications and newsgroups
Conferences and events
The Feynman Prizes
Some articles on the web
- There's plenty of room at the bottom, by Richard P. Feynman, is
a classic 1959 article which discusses the limits of miniaturization and forecast
the ability to "...arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all
the way down!"
- Molecular engineering: an approach to the development of general capabilities
for molecular manipulation, by K. Eric Drexler. The first journal article on molecular nanotechnology.
- A summary of Advanced automation for space missions, a 1980 NASA study which
provides a good introduction to self replicating systems.
- Atomistic
design and simulations of nanoscale machines and assembly..
- That's impossible:
how good scientists reach bad conclusions
- Nanotechnology:
what will it mean?, IEEE Spectrum,
January 2001
- Nanotechnology
is coming, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
September 11 2000
- Nanotechnology:
Designs for the Future
- Several papers on nano design and related issues (including several mpeg
movies of simulated nanostructures) and a paper discussing NASA applications
of molecular nanotechnology from the computational nanotechnology project
at NASA Ames.
- A proposed "metabolism" for a hydrocarbon assembler.
- Overview of self replication.
- Self replicating systems and molecular manufacturing.
- Self replicating systems and low cost manufacturing.
- Molecular manufacturing: adding positional control to chemical synthesis.
- It's a small, small, small, small world, published in MIT's
Technology Review, provides a general introduction to nanotechnology.
- A new family of six degree of freedom positional devices discusses
the Stewart platform, a simple robotic arm, and a new proposal: the double
tripod. It then analyzes and compares their positional accuracy in the face
of thermal noise at room temperature.
- Steps towards molecular manufacturing discusses the design of molecular
building blocks that could be used in conjunction with positional assembly
in solution (no vacuum) to build a useful range of non-diamondoid molecular
structures, including early assemblers.
- Computational nanotechnology discusses the idea of using computer
simulation to speed the development of this new technology.
- Theoretical studies of a hydrogen abstraction tool for nanotechnology
is an ab initio study of a proposed molecular tool.
- A proof about molecular bearings.
- Design considerations for an assembler discusses the design of a
"simple" diamondoid assembler.
- Convergent assembly can make meter scale or larger products starting
with nanometer scale parts.
- Nanotechnology and medicine discusses some of the possible medical
applications of nanotechnology.
- Foresight issues press
release. "[Smalley] offers vehement opinions and colorful metaphors
but no relevant, defensible scientific arguments..."
- Kurzweil
analyzes the issues. "Smalley's position, which denies both the promise
and the peril of molecular assembly, will ultimately backfire"
- Howard Lovey's nano blog covers Clash
of the nanotech titans. "...I've covered local and national government
enough to confidently question the motives of those who side with the Smalley
camp."
- The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) issued a press
release. "If Smalley's goal is to demonstrate that machine-phase
chemistry is fundamentally flawed, he has not been effective..."
- The New
York Times :"The debate has caught widespread attention among nanotechnology
researchers..."
- A bibliography
on mechanosynthesis and proposal
for further research. Computational chemistry can validate the feasibility
of mechanosynthesis, what's needed is funding.
- Lawrence Lessig in Wired
says: "Should science tell the truth? You'd think that question would
need no answer. But in the vortex known as Washington, DC, the obvious too
often gets bent."
Other sites
Some Frequently Asked Questions
Some groups focused on nanotechnology
Other pages
- The House Science Committee, Subcommittee on Basic Research, held hearings
on nanotechnology on June 22nd, 1999. Testimony was heard from
Eugene Wong (NSF),
Paul McWhorter (Sandia),
Richard Smalley (Rice), and
Ralph Merkle.
- NSF is funding research in nanotechnology.
Neal Lane, the Director of NSF, said: "If I were asked for an area of science
and engineering that will most likely produce the breakthroughs of tomorrow,
I would point to nanoscale science and engineering, often called simply "nanotechnology"."
- James
Gimzewski (formerly at IBM Zurich) made the world's smallest abacus as
well as positioned individual molecules at room temperature.
- The Rice University Nanotechnology Initiative
- The Laboratory for Molecular Robotics at USC is run by Aristides Requicha and is investigating the precise manipulation of atoms
and molecules.
- The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts is interested in revolutionary new
ideas that "leap-frog" the evolution of current aerospace systems in a 10-40
year time horizon.
- Wilson Ho
and his group
show their atomically
resolved and precise work in pictures.
- Charles Lieber's group at Harvard.
- Scanning tunneling microscopy at IBM Almaden includes images of several structures
built by positioning individual atoms.
- The Materials and Process Simulation Center at Caltech, run by Bill Goddard,
has computationally modeled a broad range of structures,
including those relevant
to the development of nanotechnology. For example, Charles Musgrave and Jason Perry, then with Goddard's group, used ab initio
quantum chemistry to analyze a molecular tool which should be useful in the
synthesis of diamondoid structures (Theoretical studies of a hydrogen abstraction tool for nanotechnology,
Musgrave et. al., Nanotechnology
2 (1991) pages 187-195).
- NRL (Naval Research Laboratory) has
several groups pursuing various aspects of nanotechnology. The Chemistry
Division (among others) pursues research in nanostructures and nanofabrication.
- Ned Seeman's lab is working on nanotechnological applications of DNA, including
(for example) a truncated octahedron. The Stewart platform, a well known positional device, is basically an octahedron
six of whose struts can be adjusted in length. While DNA is not as stiff as
might be desired for molecular robotics applications, the ability to synthesize
an octahedral structure suggests that the self assembly of a simple positional
device is possible.
- Links to information about diamond CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition).
- An Alpha release of Carol Shaw's Molecular Assembly Sequence Software (MASS) for the Macintosh.
- Ralph C. Merkle's talk
on the need for continued nanotechnology research at the Stanford Spiritual
Robots Symposium.
- Ralph C. Merkle's brief video
introduction to nanotechnology (from his appearance on Big
Thinkers).
- Some constants, conversion
factors, etc. that are useful in nanotechnology.
- Geoff Leach's nano directory with information on Crystal Clear, a crystal editor with a
graphical user interface.
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Virtual Reality Nanomanipulator
Project.
- A group at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) is modeling molecular components.
- Some reactions to nanotechnology from the technical community.
- RAND has issued a report on The Potential of Nanotechnology for Molecular
Manufacturing
- Nanotechnology in manufacturing by John Walker, part of a talk he gave in
1990 at the Autodesk technology forum.
- NIST has an interest in nanomanufacturing of atom-based standards.
- A macroscopic modular reconfigurable robot has been designed modeled and a prototype
built at Stanford.
- HotWired has a page of scenarios about the future, including some speculative scenarios about nanotechnology.
- A new version of the planetary gear illustrated in Nanosystems on
pages 311 and 312.
- MITRE has a web page on nanoelectronics and nanocomputing.
- Reversible computing is also an important issue if we are to continue improving
computer performance. Molecular manufacturing will let us put a very large
number of logic elements into a very small volume, so if we are to avoid creating
a great deal of heat we'll need to keep the energy dissipation per
logic operation very low indeed!
- Visual images of
some proposed molecular machines.
- The slides for some talks
on nanotechnology are available.
This is the home
page of Ralph C. Merkle's nanotechnology
web site. It can be found on the web at http://www.zyvex.com/nano.