From the category archives:

Aim points

Updated post on high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing

August 23, 2010

I’ve updated “The Physical Basis of High-Throughput Atomically Precise Manufacturing”. Not a big change, but I expanded the discussion of reliable molecular modeling of selected, highly constrained systems, along the lines discussed here: “Making vs. Modeling: A paradox of progress in nanotechnology”.

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Next up: Asteroids

July 4, 2010

Soon after Earth’s life first touched the Moon, NASA promised to make spaceflight routine and inexpensive, and I began studying the prospects for space as a genuine frontier.
Geologists had analyzed the new, hard-won lunar samples, and I read up on the results in the local college library. Not nice: almost no carbon, nitrogen, or hydrogen, [...]

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The molecular approach
to atomically precise fabrication

March 12, 2010

A few days ago, I wrote a brief sketch of the status and paths forward in the molecular approach to atomically precise fabrication. It offers a sampling, not a full picture:

 

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Why fusion won’t provide power
   (at a reasonable cost)

January 20, 2010

The greatest problem with fusion power is rarely mentioned and scarcely on the research agenda: capital cost. When I discussed the problem earlier, in “Fusion Power: A New Way to Boil Water”, I hadn’t seen this quietly damning report, which I think is worth quoting:

Issues and R&D needs
for commercial fusion energy
An interim report of the
ARIES [...]

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Molecular Manufacturing:
The NRC study and its recommendations

January 7, 2010

Part 6 of a series prompted by the recent 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”. This is arguably the most important post of the series, or of this blog to date.
Topics:
— The most credible study of molecular manufacturing to date
— The study’s recommendations for Federal research support
— The [...]

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The Molecular Machine Path
to Molecular Manufacturing (2):
Exploiting Improved Methods and Building Blocks

December 27, 2009

Part 4 of a series on the history and prospects of advanced nanotechnology concepts, prompted by the upcoming 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

Rigid, structurally diverse bis-peptide oligomers C. Schafmeister, JACS, 2006

In this post, I’d like to outline the promise of fabrication technologies that are within reach of [...]

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The Molecular Machine Path
to Molecular Manufacturing (1):
Foldamers and Brownian Assembly

December 25, 2009

Part 3 of a series prompted by the upcoming 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

Lathe, 1911 A machine tool, used to make machines

In my view, the most attractive way forward in developing advanced molecular machine systems is by exploiting the molecular machine systems that are available today. Historically, [...]

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Molecular Manufacturing: Where’s the progress?

December 19, 2009

Part 2 of a series on the history and prospects of advanced nanotechnology concepts, prompted by the upcoming 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

John Stewart Mill Debugging defects in human thought

As cognitive psychologists know, we human beings suffer from multiple, systematic cognitive biases, aberrations of intellectual vision that [...]

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How to make carbon nanotubes
at room temperature

November 15, 2009

As I noted in a recent post on self-assembled nanoelectronics (“Carbon Nanotube Transistors through DNA Origami”), carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hold promise for self-assembled nanomechanical systems, too: They are orders of magnitude stiffer than biomolecules, and can serve not only as rigid components, but also as low-friction linear and rotary bearings to support moving parts.
Recent [...]

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Carbon Nanotube Transistors through DNA Origami

November 12, 2009

Caltech researchers have applied DNA-based self-assembly to bind pairs of carbon nanotubes into structures that can act as field-effect transistors. Nature Nanotechnology has a prepublication release of their paper, “Self-assembly of carbon nanotubes into two-dimensional geometries using DNA origami templates”; the work emerged from a collaboration centered on the Winfree lab. Physorg.com reports the story [...]

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Reflections on nanotechnology
(in a curved mirror)

October 23, 2009

Earlier today, Nanowerk.com posted an article I wrote. It begins like this:
Yesterday, an article in Nanowerk presented yet another description — by someone else — of what I think about nanotechnology. Since I am a leading expert on that topic, perhaps I can offer a more direct and reliable statement of my actual views, together [...]

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Molecular Nanomachines: Physical Principles and Implementation Strategies

October 1, 2009

I’ve migrated another paper to E-drexler.com:

Drexler, KE. “Molecular Nanomachines: Physical Principles and Implementation Strategies”, Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, 23:377-405 (1994).
(With thanks to Robert Bradbury for the original HTML conversion.)

Click to read.

See also:

The Physical Basis of Atomically Precise Manufacturing
A Telescope Aimed at the Future
Productive nanosystems: the physics of molecular fabrication [pdf] (from [...]

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