From the category archives:

Nanotechnology

Boron is the new carbon…

September 13, 2010

…and I read it in EMBO Reports.
Declaring that “boronate esters are the new [reversible covalent linkers in foldamers and self-assembly]” would be less playful and entertaining, but I say something like that here: “Exploiting strong, covalent bonds for self assembly of robust nanosystems”.

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Forcible, reversible mechanochemistry

September 12, 2010

Chemists at Duke and Stanford have prepared polymers that break and reform C–C bonds when yanked and relaxed (paper here). They engineered these polymers to contain cyclopropane rings in their backbones, using the electron-withdrawing effect of a bridging –CF2– to weaken the critical bond (see figure). Applying intense ultrasound to these polymers in solution [...]

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Which came first, the Nano or the NNI?

September 5, 2010

A news article in this week’s Nature discusses the origin of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, but the story sets some of the causality in reverse. The story outlines how science advocacy at the Federal level in 1999 led to presidential and congressional support in 2000, and says that afterward…
…a certain amount of hype [...]

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The best introduction to DNA nanotechnology

August 28, 2010

For a good overview of structural DNA nanotechnology and DNA origami (a molecular wonder of the modern world), see this presentation from a course in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. The subject calls for a strong visual presentation, and the slides deliver this together with a good description of DNA engineering [...]

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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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About releasing building blocks…

August 19, 2010

A reader asks a general question about mechanosynthesis — How could a device release a reactive molecule once it’s bound to a product? — and I’d like to outline why there are many answers.

 

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The 7th Peptoid Summit:
Progress in peptoid toolkit development

August 13, 2010

The 7th Peptoid Summit highlighted progress in design technology for one of the most promising toolkits in modular molecular systems engineering.
I’ve outlined the submonomer method for peptoid synthesis as a powerful and convenient way to assemble diverse molecular components, and the recent development of crystalline peptoid nanosheets as a platform for extended atomically-precise structures. The [...]

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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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Nano promise to be fulfilled?

May 29, 2010

The Economist reports that “…a bright future beckons, and some of the nanohype that has been swirling around might actually get translated into a useful product.”
The reason is that “…adding a sprinkle of nanoparticles to water can improve its thermal conductivity, and thus its ability to remove heat from something that it is in contact [...]

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A programmable nanoscale assembly line

May 20, 2010

When I picked up my copy of this week’s Chemical & Engineering News this evening, I found that the lead article begins with this:
Futuristic visions of nanobots that travel the body to treat disease and construct compounds one atom at a time got a little closer to reality this week, thanks to two advances in [...]

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Flattening the Matterhorn

May 19, 2010

Text and graphics excerpted from Figure 4 of a recent paper on a new form of nanoscale lithography:
AFM scan of the replica of the Matterhorn written into the molecular glass (3D data source: geodata © swisstopo).
The maximum steepness of slopes is an important parameter in scanning probe lithography. It would be easy to misread the [...]

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