Encouraging news about mechanosynthesis

Yesterday there was a very encouraging posting (by guest blogger Tihamer Toth-Fejel) on the Responsible Nanotechnology blog, regarding recent goings-on with mechanosynthesis. What the heck is mechanosynthesis? It is the idea that we will build molecules by putting atoms specifically where we want, rather than leaving them adrift in a sea of Brownian motion and random diffusion. Maybe not atoms per se, maybe instead small molecules or bits of molecules (a CH₃ group here, an OH group there) with the result that we will build the molecules we really want, with little or no waste. The precise details about how we will do this are up for a certain amount of debate. We used to talk about assemblers, now we talk about nanofactories, but the idea of intentional design and manufacture of specific molecules remains.

The two items of real interest in the CRN blog posting are these.

First, Philip Moriarty, a scientist in the UK, has secured a healthy chunk of funding to do experimental work to validate the theoretical work done by Ralph Merkle and Rob Freitas in designing tooltips and processes for carbon-hydrogen mechanosynthesis, with the goal of being able to fabricate bits of diamondoid that have been specified at an atomic level. If all goes well, writes Toth-Fejel:

Four years from now, the Zyvex-led DARPA Tip-Based Nanofabrication project expects to be able to put down about ten million atoms per hour in atomically perfect nanostructures, though only in silicon (additional elements will undoubtedly follow; probably taking six months each).

Second is that people are now starting to use small machines to build other small machines, and to do so at interesting throughputs. An article at Small Times reports:

Dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) uses atomic force microscope (AFM) tips as pens and dips them into inks containing anything from DNA to semiconductors. The new array from Chad Mirkin’s group at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., has 55,000 pens - far more than the previous largest array, which had 250 pens.

So there are two take-home messages here. First, researchers are getting ready to work with the large numbers of atoms needed to build anything of reasonable size in a reasonable amount of time. Second, this stuff is actually happening rather than remaining a point of academic discussion.

Toth-Fejel writes:

What happens when we use probe-based nanofabrication to build more probes? ...What happens when productive nanosystems get built, and are used to build better productive nanosystems? The exponential increase in atomically precise manufacturing capability will make Moore’s law look like it’s standing still.

Interesting stuff.