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Nanotechnology, replication, and low cost manufacturing

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Title: Nanotechnology, replication, and low cost manufacturing


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Nanotechnology, replication, and low cost
manufacturing
  • Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D.
  • Principal Fellow

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Health, wealth and atoms
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Arranging atoms
  • Diversity
  • Precision
  • Cost

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Richard Feynman,1959
Theres plenty of room at the bottom
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1980s, 1990s
Experiment and theory
Binnig and Rohrer
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President Clinton, 2000
The National Nanotechnology Initiative
  • Imagine the possibilities materials with ten
    times the strength of steel and only a small
    fraction of the weight -- shrinking all the
    information housed at the Library of Congress
    into a device the size of a sugar cube --
    detecting cancerous tumors when they are only a
    few cells in size.

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Positional assembly
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Experimental
100 microns
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Experimental
H. J. Lee and W. Ho, SCIENCE 286, p. 1719,
NOVEMBER 1999
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Theoretical
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Self replication
A redwood tree (sequoia sempervirens) 112 meters
tall Redwood National Park
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Complexity (bits)
  • Von Neumann's constructor 500,000
  • Mycoplasma genitalia 1,160,140
  • Drexler's assembler 100,000,000
  • Human 6,400,000,000
  • NASA over 100,000,000,000

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Self replication
The Von Neumann architecture
Universal Computer
Universal Constructor
http//www.zyvex.com/nanotech/vonNeumann.html
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Self replication
Replicating bacterium
DNA
DNA Polymerase
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Self replication
Drexlers proposal for an assembler
http//www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/chapt_6.h
tml
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Broadcast architecture
Macroscopic computer
http//www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRep.html
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Advantages of broadcast architecture
Broadcast replication
  • Smaller and simpler no instruction storage,
    simplified instruction decode
  • Easily redirected to manufacture valuable
    products
  • Inherently safe

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Exponential assembly
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Replication
The goal low manufacturing costs
  • Potatoes, lumber, wheat and other agricultural
    products have costs of roughly a dollar per
    pound.
  • Molecular manufacturing will eventually make
    almost any product for a dollar per pound or
    less, independent of complexity. (Design costs,
    licensing costs, etc. not included)

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An overview of replicating systemsfor
manufacturing
Replication
  • Advanced Automation for Space Missions, edited by
    Robert Freitas and William Gilbreath NASA
    Conference Publication 2255, 1982
  • A web page with an overview of replication
    http//www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRep.html

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Replication
Popular misconceptionsreplicating systems must
  • be like living systems
  • be adaptable (survive in natural environment)
  • be very complex
  • have on-board instructions
  • be self sufficient (uses only very simple parts)

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Feynman, 1959
  • The problems of chemistry and biology can be
    greatly helped if our ability to see what we are
    doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is
    ultimately developed -- a development which I
    think cannot be avoided.

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Impact
The impact of a new manufacturing
technology depends on what you make
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Impact
Powerful Computers
  • Well have more computing power in the volume of
    a sugar cube than the sum total of all the
    computer power that exists in the world today
  • More than 1021 bits in the same volume
  • Almost a billion Pentiums in parallel

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Impact
Lighter, stronger, smarter, less expensive
  • New, inexpensive materials with a
    strength-to-weight ratio over 50 times that of
    steel
  • Critical for aerospace airplanes, rockets,
    satellites
  • Useful in cars, trucks, ships, ...

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Impact
Nanomedicine
  • Disease and ill health are caused largely by
    damage at the molecular and cellular level
  • Todays surgical tools are huge and imprecise in
    comparison

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Impact
Nanomedicine
  • In the future, we will have fleets of surgical
    tools that are molecular both in size and
    precision.
  • We will also have computers much smaller than a
    single cell to guide those tools.

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Impact
Size of a robotic arm 100 nanometers
8-bit computer
Mitochondrion 1-2 by 0.1-0.5 microns
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Impact
Mitochondrion
Size of a robotic arm 100 nanometers
Typical cell 20 microns
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Respirocytes
http//www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes
.html
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Human impacton the environment
The environment
  • Population
  • Living standards
  • Technology

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Reducing human impacton the environment
The environment
  • Greenhouse agriculture/hydroponics
  • Solar power
  • Pollution free manufacturing

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How long?
  • The scientifically correct answer is I
    dont know
  • Trends in computer hardware suggest early in this
    century perhaps in the 2010 to 2020 time frame
  • Of course, how long it takes depends on what we do
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