Materials Science Toys on Display

BoringNitride writes "Nanotech tool vendors hawked their wares to innovative engineers at the spring meeting of the Materials Research Society this week at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Wired took a break from presentations on molecular motors and the mechanical properties of human skin to take a walk across the showroom floor. They captured close-ups of some of the most precise molecule-building and measurement tools in the world."

Comments

robbIE goes full censorship with his patentdead..

[Anonymous Coward]

postblock devise. how disappointing/pathetic. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A

is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying

dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html

the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.

corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7

as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull wa

mmm nanotech porn

[nuzak]

(hey that's the article title)

The Fujifilm Dimatix printer can churn out OLED (organic LED) displays, biosensors and custom circuits. Unlike an ordinary printer, its piezoelectric head can squirt out gold nanoparticles, colloidal silver or DNA, a few trillionths of a liter at a time.

I wonder if the cartridges on that thing come only 1/4 full?

Re:mmm nanotech porn

[Anonymous Coward]

the only part I saw was
"Nanotech Porn:" ... "Probe Stations" ...

where do I sign up?

Re:mmm nanotech porn

[Anonymous Coward]

nanotech porn?!

*fab, fab, fab*

I can do that

[bar-agent]

This modular desktop evaporation system, made by Ted Pella, can gracefully deposit thin films of metal or organic material onto any substrate.

I am also capable of gracefully depositing thin films of organic material on a substrate, but instead of an evaporation system, I use an ejaculation system! And instead of a substrate, I use a jailbait!

[dodges a tomato]

Re:I can do that

[Oktober Sunset]

and if purity standards for US drinking water continue to deteriorate, soon you will probably be able to deposit the metals too.

Re:I can do that

[wramsdel]

Look, what you do in the privacy of your own home is your business, but once you start bombarding them with electrons it becomes a punishable offense. Besides, if you need systems capable of magnifying by 40,000X to resolve your *ahem* minute features, you might have other problems.

Re:I can do that

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's already got zinc down.

Re:I can do that

[ppanon]

Hey, we all know that it's now legal in the USA to apply torture such as electrical shocks to the gonads. But nobody seems as brazen in bragging about it as you are, sir.

labeling issues

[alxkit]

does anyone know why original article was titled "Nanotech Porn: Fabricators, Probe Stations and Atomic Force Microscopes?"

Re:labeling issues

[ill stew dottied ewe]

It is supposedly so good that it would be arousing to Nanotech fans. This does not imply sexual content of the article. This has been used in other forms such as geek porn.

Re:labeling issues

[kcelery]

fetish pron

Re:robbIE goes full censorship with his patentdead

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's some pure, genuine, good old fashioned 'net babble right there.

Robots!

[Colonel Korn]

I was hoping to see more automation. Sure, you can buy SEM systems that can handle automated analysis of silicon wafers at various stages of their processing from smooth surface to chip, but where are the _programmable_ tools that will let me set up fifty structured thin films in geometries that _I_ select and leave them to be analyzed overnight?

Re:Robots!

[Goldsmith]

oh, those exist too...

but for most people doing research, a $60,000 SEM is much more interesting. Not all of us can afford the millions it costs to buy automated systems. We can all afford to allow average students to work in our labs for free, doing what a robot would do. Those of us who are clever find talented students and get them to build the automation into one of these cheap systems from scratch.

In our lab, we've automated both a cheap AFM and SEM, saving a few million dollars and generating a few undergraduate honors projects in the process (although we can't do 50 samples in one night).

Re:Robots!

[chrisfez]

Most professors already have a large number of inexpensive and skilled robots used to perform repetitive tasks during much of the day - they're called "grad students".

Cool Machines!

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously who the hell would want a $60 000 electron microscope for their desk?

Re:Cool Machines!

[shadwstalkr]

I do. It would go right next to the $40,000 FTIR on my desk. That's why you should have studied physics.

Re:robbIE goes full censorship with his patentdead

[wellingj]

In true Jeopardy fashion, here is my answer:
Who is John Galt?

lots of nano talk and markting hype

[Anonymous Coward]

but very little actual real nano products has anybody made anything nano related that are in the marketplace ? seems nano is the new DukeNukemForever perhaps they should team up

Homebrew nanotechnology projects

[the_kanzure]

Check this out:
* STM/AFM machines for $100 - use a very finely pointed wire to scan across a surface at tens of thousands of atoms per second (raster scanning) to visualize the super small. Hear anything about nanolithography? Hop to it.
* STM-based DNA sequencing [nanopores?]. Rumor has it that ZS Genetics is going to be doing this by the end of 2008.
* DIY graphene transistors -- this was the subject of a recent article. Might be better than semiconductor nanocrystal synthesis (like Kovio). You can do this a few ways, such as punching holes in graphene (very dense pencil marks), or scanning probe lithography, chemical etchants like in si fabbing, etc.
* Have I missed anything?

Off-topic: other alternate transistors like LiquiFET, etc.

Re:Homebrew nanotechnology projects

[Goldsmith]

If you can make an STM capable of atomic resolution, or a good AFM, or a graphene transistor, you should be getting a paycheck or a degree for it. I'm not saying a degree is necessary to do that, just that this stuff is actually very hard, and many "professionals" have a hard time getting it to work. Get your credit from the establishment if you can do it.

If you were to spend some time in a "professional" lab doing this stuff, you would find that it is almost all DIY. One, if you can buy your experiment, you are not on the cutting edge. Two, how else would extremely clever people with a small budget do these things? Buy the raw materials and spend a lot of time in the machine shop and in front of a computer.

Homebrew nanotechnology in SF

[argent]

Rebecca Ore used old (well, it would have been old by the time of the novel) homebrew and cheap nanotech like this as a key part of the plot of her recent SF novel Time's Child. I helped her google up some references for it... this article would have been the motherlode. :)