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Nanotech Motors, Biotransistors, DNA Fractals

Posted by Zonk on from the body-wars dept.

FleaPlus writes "The American Institute of Physics has a news bulletin describing a couple of interesting nanotech advances. The first is the smallest electric motor in the world, made by Alex Zettl's group at UC Berkeley. The second is a single-protein wet biotransistor. Additionally, Technology Research News reports on algorithmic self-assembly of DNA Sierpinski triangles, by Erik Winfree's group at Caltech."

6 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator by katana · · Score: 5, Funny

    Okay, I'm not a scientist, but why would you want a *smaller* vibrating dildo?

  2. Re:Coral Cache by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 5, Informative

    Berkeley has a 4xOC48 line last I heard. NYU will go down before Berkeley does...

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  3. How does it work ? by karvind · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The peak pulsed power is 20 microwatts. Considering that the device is less than 200 nm on a side, the power density works out to about 100 million times that of the 225 hp V6 engine in a Toyota Camry.

    I am not sure if I understand the power density claims. Here is a simple calculation. 20 microwatts in cube of 200nm x 200nm x 200nm will be 20 microwatts in 8 x 10^(-15) cm^3 volume. That will be a power density of 2.5 x 10^9 Watts/cm^3.

    Sun's fusion power density is only ~ 2.5x10^(-4) Watts/cm^3 with core temperature around 15.7 x 10^6 K. I can understand that we wouldn't be generating the heat at peak density, but if we generate that high power desnity in nanomechanical system for even any reasonable time - wouldn't it just evaporate unless we find a very fast way of removing the power efficiently ?

  4. definition of "nano-" by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nanotechnology has gotten a reputation for being a flaky area of research. Part of the problem is that the word "nanotech" sounds cool, so people tend to use it without defining what they mean. Eric Drexler originally defined it in terms of machines that worked at the molecular level, i.e., on scales of a few nanometers. The problem is that there are fundamental reasons why it's extremely difficult to construct machines on that scale, and in the 20 years since he published Engines of Creation, basically nothing has happened to realize his original vision. Meanwhile, people have been making smaller and smaller machines via techniques that would never be able to scale down to the scales Drexler had in mind. The wikipedia article distinguishes between "nanotechnology" and "molecular nanotechnology." The Berkeley group's motor, for instance, is clearly on a scale (hundreds of nm) that is not molecular nanotechnology.

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  5. Re:Eventually... by karvind · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At Cornell we already made the Nanoguitar and Nano saxophone. Yes we were working on the nanodrums these days. No applications for auditions, we use very fast pulse lasers only :)

  6. Re:The DNA trick is particularly disappointing by xEndymionx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the error rate is actually rather low, the high number reported comes from error propagation. if you get a single site error, the next generation of cells below it will be computed using that error, and will thus also be erroneous. the actual number of genuine errors is rather small. winfree also has done work in error-correcting self assembly of wang tiles (which is what this really is). the key point to his generating the sierpinski gasket is that it proves that one can computer elemetary cellular automata with this dna blocks, and that includes eca rule 110, which has been proven to be universal by matthew cook. dr. winfree gave a talk about all these findings early last semester at my university.