Transcript Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology
Ellen Spertus
MCS 123/223
November 5, 2002
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 with13a
scanning tunneling microscope. Nature 344, 524-526 (1990).
Copyright © 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
•
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“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
Scientific American, September 2001
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http://www.sciam.com/2001/0901issue/0901whitesides.html
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
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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
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