From the category archives:

Aim points

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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What is simple?
Polyethylene, molecular modeling,
and molecular machines

July 8, 2009

A scientist recently remarked to me that molecular modeling techniques cannot accurately predict the mechanical properties of typical polymers, even one as simple as polyethylene, a hydrocarbon consisting of long chains of –(CH2)– units. He was, I think, suggesting that molecular modeling may tell us little about molecular technologies based on structures that would be [...]

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Myths through mythquotation

June 18, 2009

When Slashdot runs the slightly misleading headline, “Real Nanotechnology Getting Closer, Says Drexler” (with a link to the technology roadmap — lots of downloads!), the Tech Talk blog at IEEE Spectrum quite naturally reports this as “Eric Drexler has just been quoted as saying ‘Real nanotechnology is getting closer’”… and thus inadvertently reinforces the myth [...]

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The Physical Basis
of High-Throughput
Atomically Precise Manufacturing

June 12, 2009

The section below, adapted from a longer work, discusses the physical basis for understanding atomically precise fabrication systems: first, a very general class of systems, and second, the specific characteristics of high-throughput systems of a kind several technology levels above where we are today. (In my previous post, “A Telescope Aimed at the Future” I [...]

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A Telescope Aimed at the Future

June 9, 2009

Our time in history is unique in that physical knowledge and computational methods enable partial understanding of technology levels above our own — and in some areas, far above. Because we understand the universal physical laws that govern matter and energy, we understand the physical laws that will govern the material structures of future technologies.
Our [...]

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Nanosystems for Molecular Manufacturing

April 4, 2009

While upgrading parts of the E-drexler.com website, though, I’ve been re-reading some of the on-line content from Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, the book that grew into, then out of, my MIT dissertation. Nanosystems explores what physics tells us about the potential of advanced molecular manufacturing systems and products. It outlines some ideas about [...]

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Graphene Nanotechnology
(and TEAM Microscopes)

April 2, 2009

I’ve intended to write about the wonders of graphene and related materials for nanotechnology, both as products and as a basis for building productive nanosystems, but there is so much to say that I didn’t know where to begin. As Rosa reminds me, though, a great virtue of a blog is that you can use [...]

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