What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is also known as molecular manufacturing technology (MMT).

Nanotechnology refers to the technology that enables manipulation of atoms with atomic precision for a vast array of construction projects. In other words nanotechnology begins its construction at the atomic level, using atoms as tiny building blocks.
All manufacturing involves the manipulation of atoms and the properties of the finished products are determined by the atom arrangement. To underline the important of structure consider that the difference between coal and diamond, or sand and computer chips, or cancer and healthy tissue is simply the atomic structure. With our current technology we are extremely imprecise, manipulating atoms by the millions and even billions with welding, cutting, milling, heating, pounding etc. Even with lithography we are imprecise at the atomic level, transistors consist of millions of atoms and we are very inaccurate in the positioning of them.

The ideas of nanotechnology began in 1959 when Richard P. Feynman said,

'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.'

He went on to say,

'...the principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom.'

Since then there has been many issues that raised doubts of the possibility of nanotechnology and there are certainly many design issues that must be addressed, but none appear insurmountable.
It has been pointed out that it is not surprising that there has been no discovery of a fundamental limit, which makes nanotechnology impossible, since living organisms operate using an organic form of nanotechnology.

So nanotechnology will provide an atom by atom approach that will give us much greater control over the structure of matter. Even with today's technology we are still able to produce impressive miniaturisation, for example in the construction of transistors and microprocessors but imagine the possibilities if we could be precise down to the individual atom. For example consider the performance increase in computers if we could take 1 cubic centimetre, devote half to nanocomputers and the other half to cooling and communication. It has been estimated that this would allow room for 0.5 trillion computers in our cubic cm and this would provide more computational power than exists in the entire world today!

How would this be possible? A single cubic micron contains a billion cubic nanometres, which is a lot of space in the field of nanotechnology; this together with the three dimensional, atomically precise chips will enable such possibilities.
In terms of data storage nantechnology produced diamond storage has been predicted to be at least 10⁷ (10^7), that's 10 million, times superior to anything we have today.

Also with both mechanical and electronic features, if you scale down the size of them they work much faster. Take mechanical nanotools for instance, if you scale a mechanical device down by a factor of 10 it increases its speed by a factor of 10. In nanotechnology devices will be scaled down by a factor of 10¹⁸ (10^18)!

Other possibilities are the creation of far superior structural materials, rather than using steel we will create diamondoid fibres, based on the structure of diamond, but with virtually no possibility of fracturing. This will provide strength to weight advantages somewhere between 50 and a few 100 times better than steel. As we have seen diamond is also an exceptionally good semiconductor, making it ideal for use in computers.
This means that these new structural materials would revolutionise construction and every industry would become dependant on them.

Nanotechnology will also revolutionise medicine, achieving surgical control at the molecular level. For example this will allow cancerous tissue to be repaired at the molecular level and as we have seen the difference between this and healthy tissue is only atomic structure.
It is estimated that in about 1/20 the size of a cell we shall have computers, disk drives, memory, sensors and machines that will be able to give a precise diagnosis and repair any cellular damage or provide any other treatment necessary. This method will clearly be a vast improvement of today's medicine, which has to cope with the current random nature of drugs or surgery involving hacking through many cells with metal objects.

The design of nanoprobes, devices able to determine the structure of matter on a sub-microscopic level we be another important aspect of early nanotechnology. These will speed advancement up by accurately observing the atomic and molecular behaviour during experimentation, allowing for much better understanding of the experiment's results.

Nanotechnology will gain many advantages not only from new materials but the improved precision will also virtually eliminate the tiny flaws that plague our current technology. Almost all failures at present occur due to those small flaws in the construction process.

In reality it is difficult to predict the changes that nanotechnology will bring until we actually have it. We can see the improvements to current technology that will be achieved, but new technologies will be unknown until we can experiment with nanotechnology.

What techniques will we use to develop nanotechnology?

There are three main possibilities that we can see that could enable the development of nanotechnology:

1. STM/AFM can position their tips with atomic precision and move atoms around, which has been fully demonstrated. The movement is only of one atom at a time, however, so this does seem to be too limited for the construction of nanomechanisms.
2. In nature RNA programming is used by organisms to create natural nanomechanisms. The DNA provides information to the RNA that in turn makes instructions available to ribosomes that enable the building of proteins. Proteins are chains that fold three dimensionally and perform tasks, such as enzymes that can build molecules. Proteins can self-assemble into complex structures. Perhaps we could copy nature and develop enzymes that could construct a molecular assembler made of protein. This could be used in turn to develop much more advanced assemblers that we can use to enable nanotechnology. Today biochemists have developed the ability to design proteins but we have not worked out how to make them fold correctly. Indeed the manufacture of proteins is an imprecise science that relies on the random nature of Brownian motion. This process is limited and mistakes are difficult to notice, an early mistake can go unnoticed and ruin a long complex project.
3. Supramolecular chemistry concerns itself with assembling molecules; this could be an alternative to biochemistry to create a basic nanomechanism to build a more complex, fully functional assembler.

While these are the current ways that are envisaged of developing nanotechnology the reality is that it may not come from any of these fields. The most likely course, however, will be a hybrid of 2 or maybe all three of the above. The greatest problem we shall face once we have discovered how to move large numbers of atoms with precision will be software issues. The software is likely to take much development and we should begin long before we are close to the atomic control.

Assemblers

These will be the initial products of nantechnology, they will be able to bond atoms together in virtually any pattern, adding a few at a time until a complex structure is complete. Using such equipment we will be able to build almost anything the laws of nature allow.
Assemblers will replace our current crude tools and open up new possibilities by allowing new arrangements of atoms. Production, medicine, computation, space and warfare are just some of the areas where capabilities are determined by ability to arrange atoms.

Self-replication

An extremely important capability of assemblers will be their ability to self-replicate, or to make copies of themselves.

As long as 1951 John von Neumann outlined the principles of self replicating machines, it has since been shown that the self-replication of a cell works in exactly the way Neumann spoke of for molecular machines.

This ability will allow tiny assemblers to build massive structures by working a parallel. If a self-replicating assembler (a 'replicator') is supplied with enough raw materials (abundant carbon atoms) and energy they can quickly create vast numbers of themselves, as the growth is expediential. In other words the first copies itself and then there are two to copy themselves at the same time, then four etc. Using this method a conservative estimate is in 10 hours there will be 68 billion and in less than 2 days they could outweigh the Earth.

A further way to increase the speed of the assemblers to build large structures (such as space station) is to feed them prefabricated building blocks (molecules as opposed to individual atoms). Think of the construction of a house today, the bricks are not glued together on site, they use prefabricated blocks (bricks) to speed up the construction time. For nanotechnology there can be billions of assemblers building these prefabricated blocks all the time, these are then shipped as chemicals to construction projects for use.

Example of assemblers building large structures

Take a rocket engine construction (this example is taken from Eric Drexler probably the world's leading nanotechnologist). Here slightly larger assemblers (as they will be using building blocks not individual atoms) will self replicate and then form a scaffold in a vat that matches the final product as directed by the project manager, a nanocomputer to which the assemblers have joined at the base of the scaffold. This nanocomputer has all the construction plans, which it uses to instruct the assemblers. The vat is then flooding with chemicals containing the prefabricated blocks and energy molecules; the assemblers pick by molecules as they need them. Each assembler constructs its part, diamondoid, plastic, graphite, sensors etc reinforcing where necessary. A quick wash down and you have a most advance rocket engine ever constructed on the planet.

More advanced nanotechnology capabilities

Interestingly a more a more advanced nanotechnology would allow us to go further, include a vascular system with assembler and disassembler systems that can move about. Then when integrated sensors detect a problem the systems can move to required area and either perform maintenance, full scale repairs, or completely recycle the material and replace a worn out parts, provided energy and raw materials are supplied. In other words the ship will be able to repair itself. Further to this the metal structure could be made to mimic muscle and actual move and slide around using fibres analogous to muscle fibres, this could allow the ship to redirect thrust as needed etc, and even remodel itself if desired.

These are examples of active materials, rather than building solid structures (which will only be needed in high stress areas), structural materials can be made entirely of machines - nanocomputers (with artificial intelligence (see below), nanorobots and nanosensors. This would allow the material to actually adapt to changing situations, this will be a massive advantage in engineering where the materials can detect problems and repair themselves. It will also be advantageous in everyday life, for example the house can change its paint colour if asked to do so.

Disassemblers (Analysers)

Nanotechnology can also be used for dissembling materials, with a nanocomputer recording layer by layer the taking apart of the sample until the entire atomic structure is computed. This information can then be feed into many nanocomputers and be copied by assemblers elsewhere. This would be extremely useful in the advent of discovering a new alloy, perhaps in an asteroid. We could learn its exact molecular make up and reproduce it anywhere this new alloy would be useful.

Along similar lines nanotechnology would also provide excellent opportunities for resource extraction, able to take exactly the right elements that we want and leave behind anything that was not valuable (strategically or commercially).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automated Engineering

With the development of nanocomputers and nanorobotics the development of AI will probably follow soon after. Here we are talking about a technical artificial intelligence, not a machine with a conscience (this is known as social artificial intelligence and as many science fiction writers have already pointed out such systems will require many more precautions to be taken). This technical AI will become crucial in many areas, most clearly in automated engineering where the computer will take over most of the designing and directly communicate its designs to assemblers for construction. This will speed up research and design tremendously. There will still be room for humans to work with the machines, but it will be a partnership.
The greatest obstacle in major construction projects will be programming the first nanocomputer and assembler, but here AI will be instrumental, making the process much easier.

Nanotechnology and Cost

Not only will nanotechnology bring a much higher technology to many areas but the costs will be greatly reduced as well. Labour costs will be zero, there will be no wages to pay; raw material costs will be virtually zero with only common elements required in the main that are freely available in rocks, the soil, water, the atmosphere or even in piles of rubbish (landfills etc). Occasionally special elements may be required but these can be had at the price of industrial chemicals (remember nanotechnology can only work with atoms, it can not turn one element into another (see below)).
Energy costs will be greatly reduced due to the high efficiency of nantechnology produced solar cells. Nanofactories will be able to be located anywhere, even underground or in orbit, both will be very cheap with nanotechnology.
Waste disposal will be free as all waste products can be broken down into individual atoms and reused elsewhere, even toxic waste. The organisation of projects will be simple as it will all be handled by computers, only the initial programming will be necessary; finally distribution will be accomplished by cheap, underground trains - with nanotechnology tunnelling will be extremely easy and cheap.

Nanotechnology and Miniaturisation

Nanotechnology is not the ultimate miniaturisation, this would be nuclear engineering (within known physical laws anyway!). Nuclear engineering would allow the very structure of atoms to be changed, thus changing carbon to hydrogen or even gold would be easy. This would be very convenient where resources are scare, but there is incredible potential here. We will be able to produce new isotopes and even new elements that we could then utilise in projects, for example we may find that construction materials built out of these new atoms may allow incredible structural properties that we can not even dream of today. There would be incredible possibilities that we can not even foresee, perhaps designed around quantum physical properties, which would give almost magical capabilities, perhaps in the area of interstellar drives.
This is all well beyond the capability of nanotechnology, the nucleus of an atom holds 99.9% of atom's mass, but only occupies 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 of it volume (the rest is the electron cloud).
It is therefore unsurprising that molecular forces have no effect on the atomic nucleus, however with our current technology nuclear machinery appear to be impossible. This is due to the fact that close packed nuclei repel strongly due to electromagnetic forces (all nuclei are of the same electric charge). This seems to preclude the possibility of nuclei working together in the same way that atoms can. Revolutionary new science will probably be required for this to become a possibility.

Abuse of Nanotechnology

It must be remembered that with all advances in technology comes greater risk if that technology is abused. Just as the development of nuclear technologies brought nuclear bombs, nanotechnology can be used to create programmable germs for use in germ warfare. This is truly frightening prospect, once there is a prototype in place, the computers/AI can construct very advanced, deadly weapon systems overnight. There will be the need strict policies, perhaps either sharing the technology with everyone or the use of extremely high security and indeed secrecy. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages but whatever the decision much work and decision making will need to be done before the arrival of the technology. As our technology increases it can extend or destroy human life, and nanotechnology will be the greatest example of that yet.

Nanotechnology and Space

NASA has fully endorsed nanotechnology as the potential future of space exploration. Present manufacturing capability limits the performance, reliability, and affordability of space systems. Nanotechnology has the potential to improve all these factors while substantially reducing the cost. This technology would undoubtedly revolutionise the space industry.

Let's take a closer look at this.

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