From the category archives:

Nanoscience

Molecular Mechano-Electronics

June 21, 2010

Pulling on the ends of a cobalt complex that bridges an electrical junction (as illustrated) changes the geometry of the coordinating ligands, hence the energies of electronic spin states, hence (as it turns out) the low-temperature electrical resistance of the junction. The authors of the paper cited here look toward potential applications for devices that [...]

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Foldamers: Accomplishments and Goals

June 1, 2010

As regular readers know, I see foldamer engineering as a key to next-generation atomically precise nanosystems. Valuable in themselves, foldamers can also serve as components of composite systems that exploit diverse materials and nanotechnologies of qualitatively different kinds.
“Foldamers: Accomplishments and Goals”, by Samuel Gellman, heads a collection of 59 abstracts from [...]

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Zinc fingers for gripping DNA

April 16, 2010

Zinc finger technology has great promise in genetic engineering and therapeutics, with potential applications in structural DNA nanotechnology, too.
Zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) are often called “game changing” because of the unprecedented way they precisely modify genes. Excitement about them is mirrored in the number of related scientific publications, which have climbed from hardly any 20 [...]

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Is 华大基因 doing science?
(aka BGI)

March 18, 2010

In a decade, the global Human Genome Project sequenced 3 billion DNA base pairs. Today, a single machine (the Illumina HiSeq™ 2000) can sequence 25 billion base pairs per day, and BGI (the Shenzhen company formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute) has purchased 128 of them. This puts BGI “on track to surpass [...]

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Learning Bioinformatics

March 12, 2010

Bioinformatics is huge, growing, fast, and has a surprising range of applications to molecular systems engineering. Here’s a PLoS article: “A Quick Guide for Developing Effective Bioinformatics Programming Skills”. From the abstract:
Successful adoption of these principals will serve both beginner and experienced bioinformaticians alike in career development and pursuit of professional and scientific goals.

[...]

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How to study for a career in nanotechnology

February 24, 2010

Students often ask me for advice on how to study for a career in nanotechnology, and as you might imagine, providing a good answer is challenging. “Nanotechnology” refers to a notoriously broad range of areas of science and technology, and progress during a student’s career will open new areas, and some are yet to be [...]

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Chemists deserve more credit:
Atoms, Einstein, and the Matthew Effect

February 17, 2010

Chemists understood the atomic structure of molecules in the 1800s, yet many say that Einstein established the existence of atoms in a paper on Brownian motion, “Die von der Molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme Gefordete Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten Suspendierten Teilchen”, published in 1905.
This is perverse, and has seemed strange to me ever since [...]

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Self-assembling nanostructures:
Building the building blocks

January 25, 2010

This post is prompted by a set of interrelated advances in chemistry that hold great promise for advancing the art of atomically precise fabrication. In this post, I’ll describe an emerging class of modular synthesis methods for making a diverse set of small, complex molecular building blocks.
The road to complex self-assembled nanosystems starts with stable [...]

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Templates for atomically precise
metal-oxide nanostructures

January 13, 2010

The cover of Science features atomically precise inorganic nanostructures, polyoxometalates (POMs), that form by means of atomically precise templates. The outer rings of these structures contain 150 molybdenum atoms.
POMs are a diverse class of nanoscale metal-oxide structures with characteristics that make them remarkably attractive as potential components for self-assembled composite nanosystems.
These characteristics include:

Atomically precise [...]

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The promise that launched
the field of nanotechnology

December 15, 2009

Part 1 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”.

When the first million readers encountered “nanotechnology”
Now, over 20 years after the fact, it is easy to forget that a concept called “nanotechnology” first swept [...]

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Flat graphene is stable, even in theory

November 23, 2009

Many scientific papers suggest that the mere existence of free-standing graphene sheets violates theoretical expectations, that it is an anomaly that demands an explanation. A paper in the current Nature describes “Ultraflat graphene”, but this graphene resides safely on mica surfaces. The paper mentions the numerous observations of microscopic corrugations in graphene, and notes that [...]

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Most popular posts, continued…

November 18, 2009

A few weeks ago, I highlighted some of the most popular posts in Metamodern’s first year (see “Knowledge about Knowledge…”). Posts that offer videos, documents, or talk slides also ranked high:
With downloadable documents and talk slides:

Molecular Nanomachines: Physical Principles and Implementation Strategies
My MIT dissertation — a draft of Nanosystems — is now online [...]

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