Posts tagged as:

nanomaterials

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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Peptoid nanosheets:
A platform for new nanotechnologies

April 22, 2010

Fresh from Ron Zuckerman’s lab at the Molecular Foundry: a new kind of molecular membrane — thin and crystalline — made by self-assembly of peptoid oligomers. As I discussed in an earlier post, peptoids have remarkable potential as building blocks for self-assembled nanosystems. Peptoids are peptide-like structures, but with monomers that can be chosen from [...]

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Carbon Nanotubes in Ordered DNA Wrappers

July 12, 2009

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNs) are well known for their outstanding strength, stiffness, and electronic properties, but their utility has been limited by the diversity of their structures and the difficulty of separating different kinds. In a new paper in Nature, a DuPont group reports the development of a new method for separation, one that also [...]

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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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Polyoxometalate Nanostructures

March 29, 2009

My technical talks often include a slide that shows several kinds of atomically precise components that may prove useful in composite nanosystems. One image is labeled “polyoxometalates”, a name that isn’t widely known. I think it should be.
Polyoxometalates (POMs) are molecular structures that are, in effect, atomically precise bits of metal oxide that contain [...]

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A High-Performance Polymer
for Nanosytems Engineering

March 19, 2009

Molecular objects made of a nylon-like, high-performance polymer are among the most impressive nanostructures in existence today, and I expect structures like these to be used in developing advanced, atomically precise nanotechnologies in the coming years. This high-performance polymer is really more of a construction kit: Its monomeric parts can be hooked up to make [...]

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CAD for Nanoengineering: DNA, proteins, and search-intensive design

March 11, 2009

In my previous post I discussed some basic design concerns that arise with atomically precise structures, and focused on materials having crystalline order. However, the ability to make structures like these is now extremely limited. Because they can’t yet be built systematically from smaller building blocks, structures of this general are more likely to be [...]

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CAD for Nanoengineering: Atoms, materials, and nanostructures

March 9, 2009

Computer-aided design of structures on an ordinary scale can ignore atoms, and this is a major simplification. A piece of steel, for example, can typically be treated as a homogenous and isotropic material. The dimensions and angles of a steel component can be chosen freely: With few limitations, a steel plate can be of any [...]

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Making vs. Modeling:
A paradox of progress in nanotechnology

February 25, 2009

Knowledge and know-how often go together. Where technologies are concerned, we tend to understand the things we make, and often can make the things we understand. This is a widespread pattern, but it’s important to recognize the exceptions, and nanofabrication is one of them.
There’s no necessary connection between understanding something and being able to make [...]

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How Nanotubes Grow: A theory that has nothing to do with reality

February 24, 2009

Today I read a report of a controversy about the growth of carbon nanotubes. There’s an entirely bogus theory involved, two scientists using harsh words, and another scientist taking the hit. Behind the controversy is another theory that I think is almost certainly correct. The real story, though, is in the reporting itself. [See update [...]

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Nanomachines, Nanomaterials, and Klm

February 20, 2009

Toward Advanced Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials (5)
My previous post in this series, Nanostructures, Nanomaterials, and Lattice-Scaled Stiffness, explains why the lattice-scaled modulus, Klm, is an important figure of merit: For a set of machines made of different materials, but with similar structures (similar numbers and arrangements of lattice cells), the Klm parameter determines the energy required [...]

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Nanostructures, Nanomaterials,
and Lattice-Scaled Stiffness

February 15, 2009

Toward Advanced Nanotechnology: Nanomaterials (4)

The peg aligns with the hole if the hole is large enough, and the fluctuations are small enough.

In a nanofabrication technology that uses nanomachines to assemble products, the stiffness of the machines is important because it limits the amplitude of thermal fluctuations, yet tolerance for fluctuations is important too. When both [...]

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