Nanotechnology

Ellen Spertus

MCS 123/223

November 5, 2002

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Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

• Shared Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965• Known also for his personality

– “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”– “What Do You Care What Other People

Think?”

• Unique combination– Theoretical physicist– Practical– Iconoclast

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Challenger Disaster (1985)

• Part of review panel

• Known for– Lambasting NASA– Dunking O-ring– Commitment to truth

• “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

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Grandfather of nanotechnology

• “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics”

• Presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, 1959

• Published in Caltech’s Engineering and Science, 1960

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Photo-reduction

• What would it take to inscribe the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?– Reduction in size by 25,000– Each dot would be the size of 1000 atoms

• In 1959, it was known how to read something that small.

• Feynman argued that soon we would be able to write that small.

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Other forms of encoding

• Represent each character (letter, number, etc.) as a sequence of dots and dashes.

• Represent dots with one kind of metal (125 atoms), dashes with another.

• Store in 3 dimensions.

• All human knowledge could be stored in a piece of dust 1/200th of an inch wide!

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Is dense information storage possible?

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Prediction: Year 2000

“In the year 2000… they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.”

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Prediction: microcomputers

“There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now.”

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History of the integrated circuit

• 1958-1959: Integrated circuit invented by– Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments)– Robert Noyce (Fairchild Semiconductor)

• 1965: Gordon Moore (Intel)– Observes that the density of transistors

(computing elements) has been doubling every two years

– Predicts this will continue or speed up– Predicts 65,000 transistors per chip by 1975

                                                                                           

                                                                                          

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Predictions “But I am not afraid to consider the final

question as to whether, ultimately – in the great future – we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down!” – Feynman, 1959

D.M. Eigler, E.K. Schweizer. Positioning single atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope. Nature 344, 524-526 (1990).

14Copyright © 1998 by Sidney Harris

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K. Eric Drexler (1955-)

• PhD, Molecular Nanotechnology, 1991

• Books+ Engines of Creation, 1986+ Unbounding the Future, 1991+ Nanosystems,1992

• Father of nanotechnology

• Founder and chairman, Foresight Institute

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• Chairman: Eric Drexler

• President: Christine Peterson

• Board of advisors (8)– Doug Englebart, inventor of

mouse, hypermedia, etc.– Ray Kurzweil– Marvin Minsky

• Senior associates (~500)

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The term “Nanotechnology”

• Coined in 1974 by Nori Taniguchi to mean precision machining with tolerances of a micrometer or less

• Popularized by Drexler in 1986

• By analogy with microtechnology– micro = one-millionth (10-6)– nano = one-billionth (10-9)

• Actually, 10-100 nm

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From Powers of Ten, by Philip and Phylis Morrison and the office of Charles and Ray Eames.

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Views of Drexler

• Among engineering students

• “Moses of the nanoworld” – Technology Review, 1999

• “No idea has gone from wild, fringe science to the dead center of mainstream research faster than nanotechnology.” – Red Herring, October 2000

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Engines of Construction

• Everything is made of atoms.

• Millennia ago, we manipulated trillions of trillions of atoms at a time.

• Throughout history, we’ve gotten better at manipulating matter.

• In the future, we’ll be able to manipulate individual atoms.

                    

                                          

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What’s a machine?

“[A]ny system, usually of rigid bodies, formed and connected to alter, transmit, and direct applied forces in a predetermined manner to accomplish a specific objective, such as the performance of useful work.”

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Another definition

• “An intricate natural system or organism, such as the human body.”

• “‘Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET.’” – Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1

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Universal assemblers

• Nanomachines able to build any legal configuration of atoms

• Once the first universal assembler is built, the “two-week revolution” will begin.

• Also universal disassemblers– Clean-up– Duplication

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Rejection of vitalism

• “Is there some special magic about life, essential to making molecular machinery work?”

• “This idea is called ‘vitalism.’ Biologists have abandoned it because they have found chemical and physical explanations for every aspect of living cells yet studied…”

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Engines of Healing (ch. 7)

• “We will use molecular technology to bring health because the human body is made of molecules.”

• A supercomputer in every cell

• Curing “a disease called ‘aging’”.

• Cryogenics

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Benjamin Franklin, 1773

“I wish it were possible … to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life.”

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Nanotechnology funding

                   

                      

Scientific American, September 2001

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Artificial and natural motors

                        

                             

http://www.sciam.com/2001/0901issue/0901whitesides.html

Scientific American, September 2001

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Universal assemblers

• Most scientists (at least in Scientific American, September 2001) do not think they are are possible.– “Large finger” problem– “Sticky finger” problem

• Foresight Institute offering $250,000 Feynman Grand Prize

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nano4/merklePaper.html

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Carbon nanotubes

• 50,000 times as thin as a human hair• As strong as diamond• Can hold 100 times the

current of metal wires• Can be used to build

transistors (logic gates)• Being used in industry

– Near term: TV displays– Long term: computers

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J. Storrs Hall

• PhD in computer science

• Research areas– Nanotechnology– Computer architecture– Programming languages– Algorithms

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Utility Fog

• Tiny robots able to– Grab on to each other– Alter their physical properties, such as color

• Applications– Telepresence– Environment (safety, comfort, etc.)– –

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SF novels about nanotechnology

• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

• Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

• Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Goonan

• Blood Music by Greg Bear

• The First Immortal by James Halperin