Posts tagged as:

mechanosynthesis

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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Ribo-Q1: Genetic manufacturing expanded

March 1, 2010

All ribosomes read genetic data as three-letter words that encode 20 standard amino acids (give or take a few anomalies). This is equally true of the ribosomes in deep-sea bacteria living at 120°C, and the ones in your thumb. This universal code has been a wall that bounds the scope of biosynthetic polypeptide engineering — [...]

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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 (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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Productive Nanosystems: The Ribosome Videos

July 16, 2009

While browsing the literature on the catalysis of bond formation in protein synthesis by ribosomes*, I came across a wonderful set of videos of the ribosomal protein manufacturing system at work, shown in recent-state-of-the-art molecular detail. These videos were presented in a Chemical & Engineering News article online, but I missed seeing them at the [...]

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Mechanochemistry, Mechanosynthesis,
and Molecular Machinery

April 14, 2009

Volume 1, Number 1 of Nature Chemistry is now out, and the next issue will include an article titled “Activating catalysts with mechanical force”. This article reports a nice experimental result and helps to illustrate the broad range of physical processes included under the umbrella terms of “mechanochemistry” and “mechanosynthesis”.
The authors demonstrate two examples of [...]

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Motors, Brownian Motors,
and Brownian Mechanosynthesis

April 11, 2009

I read a new paper today titled “A Bipedal DNA Brownian Motor with Coordinated Legs”, but I find that this has prompted me to write not about what is new there — an advance in mechanical DNA nanotechnologies that is related to purely-DNA-based logic circuits — but instead about motors, Brownian motors, and their relationship [...]

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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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Effective Concentration in Self Assembly,
Catalysis, and Mechanosynthesis (2)

March 27, 2009

In my post on effective concentration, I noted that the concentration of water in water (about as high as a real concentration can be) is 55 M, while observed effective concentrations are often >55,000 M. This is puzzling until you realize that, for a molecular collision to result in a reaction, it must typically hit a target [...]

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Atomic Layer Deposition
for Atomically Precise Fabrication (1)

March 23, 2009

I recently posted on a surprising atomically precise fabrication process, and in a comment, Tom Craver remarked that
If a method like this could be combined with Single Layer Deposition , it seems like it’d be getting awfully close to allowing building 3D structures — embedded in a solid, so the next step would be [...]

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Effective Concentration in Self Assembly,
Catalysis, and Mechanosynthesis (1)

March 22, 2009

I find that the concept of “effective concentration” helps to clarify my thinking about molecular processes that include catalysis, self assembly, and mechanosynthesis. The concept applies most directly to reaction rates, and it uses ordinary, solution-phase processes as a reference point.
Reactant concentration and reaction rate
In a relevant and typical case, molecules of type A react [...]

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AFM Atom Manipulation: A surprising technique

March 14, 2009

Shortly before I launched Metamodern, Science published a remarkable paper by Sugimoto et al. describing atom-by-atom manipulation of a monatomic layer of tin (Sn) on silicon (Si). The animation to the right shows the steps in constructing a pattern of Si atoms that spells ‘Si’. Each frame is an atomic force microscope image made [...]

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