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Nanotech Products Hitting the Market
stdin writes "Saw this on SFGate. Nanotech's first fruits are nearing the consumer market." Not little machines, yet, but a variety of products using very small components.
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You're assuming nanomachines use ejection-based engines. Perhaps it would be better to use less-efficient forms of propulsion like propellers or even legs. Also, you're neglecting the fact that (in general) the machine is makings its way through a relatively dense medium. Most of the force would be spent displacing the thousands or millions of atoms in the path it is trying to follow.
Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal we can make diamond. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a few other trace elements) we can make computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt, water and air we can make potatoes. Todays manufacturing methods are very crude at the molecular level. Casting, grinding, milling and even lithography move atoms in great thundering statistical herds. It's like trying to make things out of LEGO blocks with boxing gloves on your hands. Yes, you can push the LEGO blocks into great heaps and pile them up, but you can't really snap them together the way you'd like.
In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves. We'll be able to snap together the fundamental building blocks of nature easily, inexpensively and in almost any arrangement that we desire. This will be essential if we are to continue the revolution in computer hardware beyond about the next decade, and will also let us fabricate an entire new generation of products that are cleaner, stronger, lighter, and more precise.
It's worth pointing out that the word "nanotechnology" has become very popular and is used to describe many types of research where the characteristic dimensions are less than about 1,000 nanometers. For example, continued improvements in lithography have resulted in line widths that are less than one micron: this work is often called "nanotechnology." Sub-micron lithography is clearly very valuable (ask anyone who uses a computer!) but it is equally clear that lithography will not let us build semiconductor devices in which individual dopant atoms are located at specific lattice sites. Many of the exponentially improving trends in computer hardware capability have remained steady for the last 50 years. There is fairly widespread confidence that these trends are likely to continue for at least another ten years, but then lithography starts to reach its fundamental limits.
If we are to continue these trends we will have to develop a new "post-lithographic" manufacturing technology which will let us inexpensively build computer systems with mole quantities of logic elements that are molecular in both size and precision and are interconnected in complex and highly idiosyncratic patterns. Nanotechnology will let us do this.
When it's unclear from the context whether we're using the specific definition of "nanotechnology" (given here) or the broader and more inclusive definition (often used in the literature), we'll use the terms "molecular nanotechnology" or "molecular manufacturing."
Whatever we call it, it should let us
Get essentially every atom in the right place. Make almost any structure consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry that we can specify in atomic detail. Have manufacturing costs not greatly exceeding the cost of the required raw materials and energy. There are two more concepts commonly associated with nanotechnology: Positional assembly. Self replication. Clearly, we would be happy with any method that simultaneously achieved the first three objectives. However, this seems difficult without using some form of positional assembly (to get the right molecular parts in the right places) and some form of self replication (to keep the costs down).
The need for positional assembly implies an interest in molecular robotics, e.g., robotic devices that are molecular both in their size and precision. These molecular scale positional devices are likely to resemble very small versions of their everyday macroscopic counterparts. Positional assembly is frequently used in normal macroscopic manufacturing today, and provides tremendous advantages. Imagine trying to build a bicycle with both hands tied behind your back! The idea of manipulating and positioning individual atoms and molecules is still new and takes some getting used to. However, as Feynman said in a classic talk in 1959: "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom." We need to apply at the molecular scale the concept that has demonstrated its effectiveness at the macroscopic scale: making parts go where we want by putting them where we want!
The requirement for low cost creates an interest in self replicating manufacturing systems, studied by von Neumann in the 1940's. These systems are able both to make copies of themselves and to manufacture useful products. If we can design and build one such system the manufacturing costs for more such systems and the products they make (assuming they can make copies of themselves in some reasonably inexpensive environment) will be very low.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
I enjoyed the article. It makes an interesting point very clear, that nanotech is showing up first in rather technologically boring places. Converse to all the visions I've heard of self-assembling machines and the like it is a real technology that is being used for real applications.
I've heard increasingly frequent use of nanoscale devices in the Bio arena and for medical purposes, but far from the "submarine" concept. One of the more interesting ones was in a Scientific American or Science News article recently (can't find the article) talking about a small square chip that makes thorough and useful chemical tests doable in one step instead of hundreds of seperate ones. Imaging the chip using a basic camera provides a detailed readout on the exposure of many thousands of tests. Another interesting application involves carbon nanotubes, a much touted revolution in circuit building and such.
It seems that many people (geeks included) have been spouting the broader, long term vision of building complex nano machines that invade our bodies or self replicate, it's refreshing to hear a realistic perspective on nano technology.
Although I do admittedly get tired of the constantly pro-tech mindset that occurs in these articles, how about someone mentioning the detriments of these technologies occasionally? (grey goo theory anyone)
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