Posts tagged as:

nanomaterials

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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Toward Advanced Nanotechnology:

Nanomaterials (3)

February 8, 2009

Mechanical engineering meets thermal fluctuations
Thermal fluctuations distort nanoscale structures, and this makes them an enemy of nanotechnologies that rely on precise mechanical motion. Indeed, if one were to set aside design and calculation and instead substitute guesses (I’m not naming guilty parties here), one might suppose that this would prevent nanomechanical engineers from designing reliable [...]

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Nanomedicine, Nanomaterials, and the NIH

December 29, 2008

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been developing what they term the NIH Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative. This is much more than a study; it’s a research program that includes a national network of eight Nanomedicine Development Centers.

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Toward Advanced Nanotechnology:

Nanomaterials (1)

December 27, 2008

The widespread obsession with diamond nanotechnologies is peculiar: How did the idea of molecular manufacturing, a general approach to organizing mechanosynthesis, been become so closely identified with making diamond?

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