Berkeley Scientists Develop Self-Assembling Nanorods

First time accepted submitter techgeek0279 writes "Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures."

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

in before grey goo

And yet they can't mass product them?

[Karmashock]

What's so odd about these self assembly claims is that while they do that to some extent it's rarely very reliable or significant.

Several industries want this material for use in products but they can't get the tons of the stuff required to actually go into production.

Why use carbon fiber when we can make nanotubes that are many times as strong when weaved appropriately? Well... because no one can get their hands on enough of it to bother making anything.

It's very frustrating.

I'm sure they'll crack the problem eventually, but until then I'm taking these reports with a grain of salt until I see them going into industrial production.

Re:And yet they can't mass product them?

[Courageous]

As a technology forecaster, I can personally attest to the strategy of "taking these reports with a grain of salt until I see them going into industrial production" is quite wise. While the sheer volume of work going on in nanomaterials suggests quite strongly that interesting nanomaterial innovations are in our future, the specific innovations are gated quite firmly by commercial production problems that for some specific innovations may never materialize at all.

similarity to protein synthesis

[mapkinase]

mRNA = "varying .. morphology of the block copolymers "
aminoacids = nanorods

Sans ribosome.