Long and medium term goals in molecular nanotechnology

These are the slides from the keynote talk given September 5th, 1997, at the Albany Conference on Biomolecular Motors and Nanomachines.

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Table of Contents Long and medium term goals in molecular nanotechnology Fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular NanotechnologyNovember 5-8Palo Alto, CAwww.foresight.org/Conferences Feynman quote Molecular nanotechnology(a.k.a. molecular manufacturing) What we can make today What we want Two ways tocreate new technologies: Evolutionary Revolutionary Developing tomorrow's technology Working backwards from the goal as well as forwards from the start Overview of the development of molecular manufacturing Two more fundamental ideas Von Neumann architecture Complexity of self replicating systems A C program that prints out an exact copy of itself English translation: Drexler's architecture The broadcast architecture Advantages of the broadcast architecture Major subsystems in a simple assembler floating in solution A broadcast method: Simple pressure actuated device A proposal for a molecular positional device Feedstock A simple binding site for butadiyne A hydrogen abstraction tool Some other molecular tools Synthesis of diamond today:diamond CVD A synthetic strategy for the synthesis of diamondoid structures A modest set of molecular tools should be sufficient to synthesize most stiff hydrocarbons. NASA study on self replication Replicating brick "Simple" diamondoid assembler We could design and model an assembler today. This would: Rationale for the design of thesimple assembler Rationale for the design of a simpler system Disadvantages of Molecular Building Block (MBB) based systems Diels-Alder cycloaddition Protein-based molecular building blocks Can we self assemble a robotic arm? Can we self assemble a Stewart platform? Can we self assemble an octahedron? A Stewart platform is an octahedron in which: Sliding struts Sliding struts Sliding struts Sliding struts Can today’s molecular motors be modified so they can be controllably stepped? Main developmental pathways to molecular nanotechnology Overview of the development of molecular manufacturing Feynman quote

Author: Ralph C. Merkle Email: merkle@xerox.com Home Page: http://www.ralphmerkle.com Other information: Further information about nanotechnology is available at: http://www.zyvex.com/nano. The PowerPoint 97 version and the PowerPoint 95 version are available on the web.