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twist or pull or push in a precise way until a chemical reaction happens right where you want it. This happens in a vacuum, so you don't have water molecules bumping around. It's a lot more controllable that way. So, if you want to add an atom to a surface, you start with that atom bound to a molecule called a "tool tip" at the end of a mechanical manipulator. You move the atom to the point where you want it to end up. You move the atom next to the surface, and make sure that it has a weaker bond to the tool tip than to the surface. When you bring them close enough, the bond will transfer. This is ordinary chemistry: an atom moving from one molecule to another when they come close enough to each other, and when the movement is energetically favorable. What's different about mechanochemistry is that the tool tip molecule can be positioned by direct computer control, so you can do this one reaction at a wide variety of sites on the surface. Just a few reactions give you a lot of flexibility in what you make.
MECHANOSYNTHETIC REACTIONS
Based on quantum chemistry by Walch and Merkle [Nanotechnology, 9, 285 (1998)], to deposit carbon, a device moves a vinylidenecarbene along a barrier-free path to bond to a diamond (100) surface dimer, twists 90 to break a pi bond, and then pulls to cleave the remaining sigma bond.
If MM is so dangerous, why not just completely ban all research and development?
Viewed with pessimism, molecular manufacturing could appear far too risky to be allowed to develop to anywhere near its full potential. However, a naive approach to limiting R &D, such as relinquishment, is flawed for at least two reasons. First, it will almost certainly be impossible to prevent the development of MM somewhere in the world. China, Japan, and other Asian nations have thriving nanotechnology programs, and the rapid advance of enabling technologies such as biotechnology, MEMS, and scanning-probe microscopy ensures that R&D efforts will be far easier in the near future than they are today. Second, MM will provide benefits that are simply too good to pass up, including environmental repair; clean, cheap, and efficient manufacturing; medical breakthroughs; immensely powerful computers; and easier access to space.
Shouldn't we be working on current problems like poverty, pollution, and stopping terrorism, instead of putting money into these far future technologies?
We should do both! Development and application of molecular manufacturing clearly can have a positive impact on solving many of today's most urgent problems. But it's equally clear than MM can exacerbate many of society's ills. Knowing that it may be developed within the next decade or two (which is not "far future"), makes preparation for MM an urgent priority.