Hubert's Interesting Nanoassembler

SEWilco writes: "In the Nando/AP article announcing the winner of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, I noticed that he's built a machine which is assembling a few thousand atoms of almost any material into various shapes. The pictures show 2D shapes, but he mentions 3D as a goal." Congratulations to Brian Hubert -- what a cool device.

Comments

A bet

[Fervent]

Ten bucks says someone figures out a way to draw nanoporn in the next five years.

Not the First

[NatePWIII]

While I was working at IBM's Almaden Center this sort of thing was getting lots of attention. Arranging atoms on copper plates to be exact. Take a look at:
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html

Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13

Mr. Hubert

[Tim]

Didja read the press release about Mr. Hubert?

Apparently, Mr. Hubert is a brilliant engineer, a brilliant computer scientist, a brilliant concert pianist, and a brilliant inventor. Oh yeah, and a brilliant architect too. I bet he even cleans the floors in the mathematics wing at MIT, and lives in southie with his brilliant med student girlfriend...

I know these press releases are designed to talk people up, but MIT's have to be the worst of all. Yeah, Mr. Hubert's a smart guy. No matter how smart he is, he's probably only brilliant at one of the above. There just isn't enough time in the day to be brilliant at everything.

Sheesh...

Super espionage

[bug_hunter]

I write the entire government secret files that I stole onto the back of a 5 cent piece. Use it to pay for a pencil that my contact is selling.

The FBI going to be able to electro-microscope everything? I think not. Yet I think nano-printers will be a bit percuiliar and expensive for your local crime syndicate so this is in the realms of cross nation spying.

Oh I suppose this technology could be used for powers of good but that's not really as interesting.

www.Nanodot.org

[BryanBruns]

As the AC notes above, this may be nanoscale assembly, but it is not the molecular engineering with precise placement of individual atoms that Drexler talks about.

BTW if you look at Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation cited above you'll see that he actually argues not for top-down regulation but for a synthesis of strategies to deal with dangers from nanotech.

If you are interested in issues related to molecular nanotechnology, come on over and join us at www.Nanodot.org. Among other things we're currently having a discussion about regulation and nanotech.

Those aren't single atoms

[Animats]

Don't get too excited. Those aren't single atoms. Compare Hubert's work with the 1990 result of IBM spelled out with xenon atoms. They look similar, but the dots in "IBM" are single atoms. The dots in Hubert's work are a few hundred atoms. Look at the scale on his images. He's drawing lines around 0.1 micron wide, which is almost reachable with current photolithography techniques used in IC fabrication. His real advance is that his system can handle a broad range of materials.

STMs are so neat. It's one of those ideas you look at and think "no way could that work". It's just several piezoelectric actuators, like those in cheap high-pitched buzzers, glued together at right angles, with a pointed needle on the end. The business end is brought close to a surface until there's some leakage current across the gap, and then it's raster-scanned in 2D while servoing the height to keep the leakage current constant. The height servo value is the output. It's simple, small, and cheap, compared to, say, an electron microscope. A STM could have been built with 1950s technology, but nobody thought to try it. It just didn't seem reasonable that you could sense individual atoms with a pointed needle moved around by a mechanical actuator.