Posts tagged as:

Nanotechnology

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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A High-Performance Polymer
for Nanosytems Engineering

March 19, 2009

Molecular objects made of a nylon-like, high-performance polymer are among the most intricate and functional nanostructures in existence today, and they’re being used to develop increasingly advanced, atomically precise nanotechnologies. This high-performance polymer is really more of a construction kit: Its monomeric parts can be bonded and folded to build atomically precise structures that self-assemble [...]

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Pyrite Nanomaterials for Solar Photovoltaics

March 13, 2009

A new paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology assesses the requirements for scaling solar photovoltaic systems to the terawatt levels needed to supply electric power on a global scale. The authors identify iron pyrite, FeS2, as an attractive but unconventional alternative: The raw materials for pyrite aren’t scarce, and both the energy and [...]

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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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High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing:
Assembling larger products (with videos)

March 4, 2009

I’ll get back to self-assembly and related topics soon, but at the moment, I’d like to show more about how macroscale manufacturing works today. There are strong analogies to engineering problems that will arise when a technology base is in place for building complex nanomachines, and I hope that even readers from manufacturing-oriented engineering cultures [...]

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High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing:
Assembly (with videos)

March 1, 2009

If you wanted to use automation to assemble an enormous number of small things, would you use robots? For throughput in the 100 ms/cycle, million-product-per-day range, a room full of robots waving their arms around might not be the best solution. A manufacturing engineer is more likely to think of using a machine like the [...]

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High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing:
Small Parts (with videos)

February 27, 2009

In a post about molecular assembly lines, I discussed non-ribosomal (hence non-programmable) peptide synthetases, a form of specialized molecular manufacturing machinery found in some cells, and added that

In the molecular-manufacturing architecture described in Nanosystems, simple assembly-line mechanisms — not elaborate, programmable machines — perform the overwhelming majority of fabrication operations.

Actually, the term “assembly line” isn’t [...]

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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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Design Software for Atomically Precise Nanotechnologies

February 23, 2009

Design software is arguably the chief limiting factor in the rate of progress toward advanced nanotechnologies, and this makes it a topic of central importance. Questions of design and modeling also touch on diverse topics: technology objectives, scientific knowledge and unknowns, research directions that deserve many millions of dollars of funding, and specific problems that [...]

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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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