Molecular manufacturing could turn sci-fi fantasies into a future reality. While Star Trek replicators could produce almost anything, real-life scientists may be able to do the same thing by manipulating atoms and molecules using a nanoscopic machine called an assembler. How long will we have to wait? Rice University professor Richard Smalley notes that it would take millions of years for a single nanoscopic machine to produce a meaningful amount of material. But, nanotechnology trailblazer Eric Drexler believes the solution is to have assemblers replicate themselves exponentially until enough exist to produce other objects.
Image Credit: 2007 HowStuffWorks
Nanotechnology is technology at the scale of 1 to 100 nanometers. How big is that? Well, a standard human hair is somewhere in the ballpark of 80,000 nanometers thick. So yes, these machines are incredibly small, manipulating matter at the molecular level. Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman (seen here speaking at Cal Tech University in 1959) is credited with some of the original ideas behind the field of nanotechnology. Learn about his proposals on the next page.
Image Credit: Joe Munroe/Getty Images
Feynman is recognized as an early proponent of nanotechnology for his 1959 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," in which he discussed the possibility of compressing machine engineering onto smaller and smaller scales. During his talk, he issued a challenge to engineers to create an electric motor smaller than 1/64th of an inch cubed. In the 1950s, machines on that scale must have seemed impossible. But more recent engineers have set their sights even smaller. See one of these engineers on the next page.
Image Credit: Joe Munroe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Engineer Eric Drexler, Ph.D., is best known for highlighting the possibility of molecular nanotechnology in books like Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation. Drexler proposed that in order to build useful machines on the nanoscale, one might first build nanoscale molecular assemblers, which would first build many copies of themselves, then work in concert to produce other structures and machines. To see a proposed model of a molecular assembler, check out the next page.
Image Credit: David Orban
We're just breaking the surface of designing useful systems that function on the nanoscale. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an orthogonal tracking microscope system. A nanoparticle solution sample well is chemically etched in a silicon crystal, with its smooth, angled sides acting as mirrors. A microscope above the well sees the particle, shown in the center of the diagram, along with four reflections that indicate its vertical position.
Image Credit: NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is developing an optical imaging technology using combinations of dynamically controlled light. The waves will be optimized for specific attributes, such as polarization. The illumination field is engineered to highlight each specimen's geometry. After striking the target, the field scatters -- revealing features smaller than 10 nanometers.
Image Credit: Illustration by Beamie Young/NIST
Ordinarily, an atomic force microscope can reveal a composite material's topography, as seen on the left. The NIST upped the ante by adding software and electronics that make it possible to map nanomechanical properties. Check out the image on the right: The system shows rigid glass fibers, sometimes with softened cores, encompassed in a polymer matrix. Next, you'll see tiny structures known as nanowires.
Image Credit: DC Hurley/NIST
Four rows of nanowires are shown, thanks to a scanning electron microscope. The wires and their corresponding nanowalls are sometimes called "nano LED," due to the light they emit when electrically charged. Talk about tiny: The distance across the micrograph is roughly the diameter of a single human hair. Check out another view of these tiny tools on the next page.
Image Credit: NIST
This micrograph shows a complete nanowire LED with the end contact. The length of nanowire 'A' is about 110 micrometers. The nanowires are aligned from the bright, metal post on the right. Next, you'll see a tool designed to move and control nanowires.
Image Credit: NIST
You wouldn't want to use these tweezers to pluck your eyebrows, but they're great for manipulating nanowires. Physicist Thomas LeBrun's "optical tweezers" use a highly focused laser to attract microscopic objects and position nanocomponents for building semiconductor circuits or biosensors. Who knows what new technologies will be developed as scientists learn more about nanocomponent manipulation?
Image Credit: Beamie Young/NIST
In this graphic illustration, fin-shaped nanowalls extend away from a single row of nanowires, represented by red-topped cylinders. Laboratories can actually "grow" nanowires with what's known as a "bottom-up" approach, in which catalyst elements are placed on a substrate in a gas-filled chamber. The gas contains the element that will compose the nanowire. Over time, this element collects on the catalyst, and the nanostructures are grown.
Image Credit: NIST
At left, nanotubes are spun in a centrifuge. Their own buoyancy drives them from the bottom, through the dense liquid. The longer nanotubes move faster as the group is spread out by length. We can see the separation in the photo on the right after spinning for 94 hours at 1,257 radians per second (about 12,000 RPM).
Image Credit: NIST
Know how to adjust a magneto-optical trap ion source? NIST researcher Jabez McClelland does. What exactly does it do? It can precisely focus beams of ions and be used as a "nano-scalpel" in advanced electronics processing. Next up -- did you know that nature produces its own nanosystems?
Image Credit: Holmes, NIST
This is a 3D rendering of an influenza virus. Naturally occurring objects like viruses and other organic units could be considered honorary nanosystems, in that they are self-contained (and often self-replicating) machines that manipulate matter on an incredibly tiny scale. Check out the next page to see how a virus deconstructs and manipulates other cells.
Image Credit: iStockphoto/Eraxion
A photo released April 26, 2009, shows the nano-Bible that was presented to Pope Benedictus XVI in May of that year. In the background is a page from the Jewish holy book at the Israeli Institute. With the help of a computer-guided ion beam, scientists were able to fit the whole of the Hebrew Bible on a 0.5-mm, gold-plated silicon chip. So -- wondering how the engineers of the world are doing on Feynman's tiny motor challenge?
Image Credit: Photo by the Technion via Getty Images
Feynman's original tiny motor challenge was met by an engineering student in 1960. These days, scientists are setting their sights even smaller: In 2003, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist Alex Zettl successfully built the world's first working nanomotor, shown above. Next, see how computers are shrinking.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
This is the laboratory of Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli microchip producer. The smallest components of the modern microprocessor have already reached the nanoscale. If Moore's law, which predicts a steady increase in the number of transistors that will fit on a chip, continues into the future, we will soon enter the age of the fully realized nanocomputer.
Image Credit: Yoray Liberman/Getty Images for Bloomberg magazine
Why is it so important to shrink machines? There are lots of reasons, but in NASA's case, the motivation is obvious. Spacecraft have to be hyper-efficient in order to complete their missions with the limited energy and other resources they can carry with them. Next, you'll get a look at one of the most important materials in nano-design.
Image Credit: Courtesy NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Chip cooling is an application where carbon nanotubes may come in handy. This picture may look like a bunch of misshapen eggs, or unadorned Easter peeps, but they're actually carbon nanotubes interposed with copper to create a composite that has good cooling properties, such as might be needed by computers. Note the scale on the image of 10 microns. That's just .01 millimeters (.00039 inches).
Image Credit: NASA
Wonder what Alex Zettl's nanomotor was built from? Nanotubes, of course! These cylindrical fullerene models have many potential applications in future science. For example, carbon nanotubes are highly conductive of both heat and electricity, and could be used to create new types of conductive plastics.
Image Credit: Courtesy NASA Ames Research Center; Center for Nanotechnology (CNT)
A carbon nanotube is a few nanometers in diameter and can be metallic or semiconducting. This new CNT has opened up endless possibilities for in molecular nanotechnology and assembly of nanoelectronics devices, circuits and computers.
Image Credit: NASA
NASA has generally been quite involved in nanotechnology research. The group that put the first man on the moon has shown high interest in nanolasers -- lasers constructed from nanometer-scale wires. The nanowires are usually about 10-100 nanometers wide and only a few micrometers long; nonetheless, their light emissions can function as lasers, and NASA thinks the technology has applications in both communications and sensing.
Now that you've seen our Nanosystems Pictures, check out our Nanostructures Pictures!
Image Credit: NASA
Comments ( )