…to nano-self-assembly. I think that there will be multiple ways to skin that cat.
2 thoughts on “A New Route”
I’m not sure this article really qualifies as “nanotech” stuff. This isn’t about making tiny machines. This is about lining up so-called “nanoparticles” (they used to be called “quantum dots”) into large arrays, so that you can us them to make, e.g. funky nonlinear optics devices.
Tiny little chunks of semiconductor tend to have unusual and highly quantum optical and electronic properties, because of the severe confinement of the conduction electrons. People have looked to exploit this for something like 20 years, but part of the problem is that you have only been able to get them suspended in solution or randomly deposited in thin layers. What these people have done is take a step towards depositing them in precise (on the atomic-length scale) patterns, so you can presumably get some kind of coherence out of their optical properties. But it leads in the direction of macroscopic electronic or optical devices, not nanomachines.
Possibly off-topic thought:
I’ve thought for a while that the idea of nanotechnology has been unnecessarily complicated by the ideas of nanoassemblers and self-replicating capability. My bet would be that we should be able to make our first ‘real’ nanomachines with some kind of compex assembly line process, where we can produce the machines via some complex manufacturing process, but the machines themselves are not able of making more machines, any more than a car is capable of creating a car factory. The process Rand references here seems more in line with this type of process, rather than Drexler’s idea of nanoassmblers.
I’m not sure this article really qualifies as “nanotech” stuff. This isn’t about making tiny machines. This is about lining up so-called “nanoparticles” (they used to be called “quantum dots”) into large arrays, so that you can us them to make, e.g. funky nonlinear optics devices.
Tiny little chunks of semiconductor tend to have unusual and highly quantum optical and electronic properties, because of the severe confinement of the conduction electrons. People have looked to exploit this for something like 20 years, but part of the problem is that you have only been able to get them suspended in solution or randomly deposited in thin layers. What these people have done is take a step towards depositing them in precise (on the atomic-length scale) patterns, so you can presumably get some kind of coherence out of their optical properties. But it leads in the direction of macroscopic electronic or optical devices, not nanomachines.
Possibly off-topic thought:
I’ve thought for a while that the idea of nanotechnology has been unnecessarily complicated by the ideas of nanoassemblers and self-replicating capability. My bet would be that we should be able to make our first ‘real’ nanomachines with some kind of compex assembly line process, where we can produce the machines via some complex manufacturing process, but the machines themselves are not able of making more machines, any more than a car is capable of creating a car factory. The process Rand references here seems more in line with this type of process, rather than Drexler’s idea of nanoassmblers.