Specially designed carbon nanotube sheets, dubbed “buckypaper,” can increase in width when stretched. The buckypaper can also increase in both length and width when uniformly compressed.
Illustration of the oppositely directed lateral bending on forming a nanotube sheet strip into a ring, when the Poisson's ratio is positive (left) or negative (right). No lateral bending occurs when the Poisson's ratio is zero (middle).
The ability to tune Poisson’s ratio could be exploited for designing sheet-derived composites, artificial muscles, gaskets, stress and strain sensors and chemical sensors.
A thick nanotube sheet could also be made to wrap around a concave, convex, or saddle shaped surface depending on the sign of Poisson’s ratio — something that could come in useful for forming shaped composites.
By choosing the ratio of SWNTs and MWNTs, the Poisson ratio can be adjusted to zero, which is useful for designing cantilevers for sensing that do not distort in width during bending. Tensile sensors can provide a sensitivity that is proportional to the volume change produced by stretch, and this volume change can be increased by the team’s discovery of the tunability of Poisson’s ratio.
Picture of a model used to predict buckypaper properties, where adjacent layers are coupled like the struts in a collapsible wine rack.
This transition can be understood by relating the deformation modes of the nanotube sheets to those of a collapsible wine rack. If two neighboring nanotube layers are coupled like the struts in a compressible wine rack, Poisson’s ratio is positive and the rack becomes narrower when stretched. In contrast, if the rack is blocked so that it can no longer be collapsed but the struts are stretchable, increases in strut length produce a negative Poisson’s ratio.
Baughman and his team subsequently found that the nanotube sheets containing both single-walled and multi-walled nanotubes had a 1.6 times higher strength-to-weight ratio, 1.4 times higher modulus-to-weight ratio and a 2.4 times higher toughness than sheets made of SWNTs or MWNTs alone.
FURTHER READING
A 2006 paper on using nanotubes for artifical muscles
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Side and top views of the NIST molecular resistor. Above are schematics showing a cross-section of the full device and a close-up view of the molecular monolayer attached to the CMOS-compatible silicon substrate. Below is a photomicrograph looking down on an assembled resistor indicating the location of the well.
NIST team demonstrates that a single layer of organic molecules can be assembled on the same sort of substrate used in conventional microchips.
The ability to use a silicon crystal substrate that is compatible with the industry-standard CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) manufacturing technology paves the way for hybrid CMOS-molecular device circuitry—the necessary precursor to a “beyond CMOS” totally molecular technology—to be fabricated in the near future.
For their electronic device, the NIST team first demonstrated that a good quality monolayer of organic molecules could be assembled on the silicon orientation common to industrial CMOS fabrication, verifying this with extensive spectroscopic analysis.
They then went on to build a simple but working molecular electronic device—a resistor—using the same techniques. A single layer of simple chains of carbon atoms tethered on their ends with sulfur atoms were deposited in tiny 100-nanometer deep wells on the silicon substrate and capped with a layer of silver to form the top electrical contact. The use of silver is a departure from other molecular electronic studies where gold or aluminum has been used. Unlike the latter two elements, silver does not displace the monolayer or impede its ability to function.
The NIST team fabricated two molecular electronic devices, each with a different length of carbon chain populating the monolayer. Both devices successfully resisted electrical flow with the one possessing longer chains having the greater resistance as expected. A control device lacking the monolayer showed less resistance, proving that the other two units did function as nonlinear resistors.
The next step, the team reports, is to fabricate a CMOS-molecular hybrid circuit to show that molecular electronic components can work in harmony with current microelectronics technologies.
This work was funded in part by the NIST Office of Microelectronics Programs and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) MoleApps Program.
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Nanocomp Technologies of Concord, is producing sheets of carbon nanotubes that measure three feet by six feet and promising slabs 100 square feet in area as soon as this summer. The first applications will probably be as electrical conductors in planes and satellites to replace copper wire and save weight. Saving weight would save fuel. Nanocomp’s materials possess a unique combination of high strength-to-weight ratio, electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as flame resistance that exceeds those of many other advanced materials by orders of magnitude. The resulting material can be a valuable addition to such applications such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, electrical conductors, thermal dissipation solutions, lightning protection and advanced structural composites. Full scale production in 2012 is expected. One of many application of interests to futurists would be superior solar sails A carbon nanotube sail could reach 4% of the speed of light by just making a close flyby slingshot around the sun. Such a perfected carbon nanotube sail would take fibers that were meters in length and not millimeters. However, the progress with large sheets of carbon nanotubes combined with being able to scale up from excellent millimeter gauge strength fibers could get us very close to that kind of performance. A solar sail would not be able to take that much cargo (think small robotic probes), but it would enable a radical improvement over the capabilities of chemical and ion rockets.
18 square foot sheets of carbon nanotubes have been made, with sheets hundreds of square feet in size promised by the summer. Being able to make solar sails using carbon nanotubes with 0.1grams per square meter in weight (weight would include all cargo and gear and structure, if the carbon nanotubes were doped for better conductance) would enable a swing by the sun within 4 solar radii to drive a solar sail up to 4% of the speed of light. Enabling high speed probes. Obviously a lot of work ahead for that goal but encouraging progress none the less.
The baseline solar sail design for an interstellar probe (ISP) mission to the near-interstellar medium assumes an areal density of 1g/m**2 (including film and structure), and a diameter of ~410 m. Missions to the stars will require very large sails with areal densities approaching 0.1 g/m**2.
Current solar sail materialThere has been some theoretical speculation about using molecular manufacturing techniques to create advanced, strong, hyper-light sail material, based on nanotube mesh weaves, where the weave "spaces" are less than ½ the wavelength of light impinging on the sail. While such materials have as-of-yet only been produced in laboratory conditions, and the means for manufacturing such material on an industrial scale are not yet available, such materials could weigh less than 0.1 g/m² making them lighter than any current sail material by a factor of at least 30. For comparison, 5 micrometre thick Mylar sail material weighs 7 g/m², aluminized Kapton films weighs up to 12 g/m², and Energy Science Laboratories' new carbon fiber material weighs in at 3g/m².
The tensile strength of the mat ranges from 200 to 500 megapascals—a measure of how tough it is to break. A sheet of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength of 500 megapascals. If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals. The sheets, which the company can produce on its single machine at a rate of one per day, are composed of a series of nanotubes each about a millimeter long, overlapping each other randomly to form a thin mat.
CNT fiber 6 gigapascals and short 1-2 millimeter gauge strength tubes have up to 9 gigapascals of strength.
Team Deltax is among many trying to make high strength macro scale fiber Some are trying to make carbon fibers from forests of fibers on silicon wafer.
There were several announcements from the end of 2007 about breakthroughs in carbon nanotube strength but so far it has been limited to gage length fibers (1-2 millimeters)
Single-walled carbon nanotubes are among the strongest materials known
and exhibit remarkably high stiffness—about 1 terapascal, and 1.2 gigapascal for high-carbon steel. Theoretically carbon nanotubes can have tensile strengths beyond 120 GPa, in practice the highest tensile strength ever observed in a
single-walled tube is 52 GPa, and such tubes averaged breaking between 30 and 50 GPa. The trouble has been keeping this strength up to macrolength fibers/ropes and sheets.
Kevlar has a tensile strength of 2.6-4.1 GPa
Quartz fiber can reach upwards of 20 GPa.
PBO 5.2-5.8 GPa
Spectra 1000 2.57 Gpa
Carbon fiber 3.5 GPa (tens of thousands of tons of carbon fiber are produced each year)
M5 fiber has been reported at 3-6 GPa of tensile strength but was supposed to reach a conservative 8.5 GPa and a target of 9.5 GPa of tensile strength There have not been many reports since 2004-2005 on the progress of the M5 fiber. It seems they are still working at laboratory quantity and scale.
Los Alamos had talked about making tubes that were several centimeters in length and spinning them into fibers that had 50 GPa and was called Superthread However, there has been no news since 2006 about this development.
Antoinette says Nanocomp’s technical achievement was to figure out a way to maintain the catalyst particle at the desired size and hold it stable long enough for the nanotube to grow to millimeter length. A computer controlling about 30 different parameters in the process—including temperature, temperature gradient, gas flow rates, and the chemistry of the mix—allows the builders to control the properties of the tubes. One setting gives them single-walled tubes, and another gives multi-walled versions, with one cylinder inside another, which provide different properties.
Adding conductive cables made of his nanotubes to the bodies of airplanes would channel the energy from lightning strikes around sensitive electronic equipment without adding much weight. And running electricity through them on the ground could heat them up and de-ice the aircraft.
It’s the light weight of carbon nanotube wires—only about 20 percent of the weight of the same volume of copper wire—that could make them especially attractive for the aerospace industry. “1850s copper wire is still the conductor of all our satellites, all our aircraft,” Antoinette says. If using nanotubes could cut the weight of two tons of copper wire in a 747 in half, he says, “you’re talking literally millions of dollars of savings in fuel costs” over the life of an airplane.
Nanocomp has already been qualified as a vendor by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The company is shipping evaluation quantities of its material to them and others for testing in various uses. Once Nanocomp gets to 100-square-foot sheets, the company will decide whether it wants to continue to scale up the size or to build more machines to ramp up production. Antoinette expects to have a pilot plant running by 2010, with full-scale production by 2012.
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Left is previous work where DNA was wrapped around carbon nanotubes.
Scientists at IBM are conducting research into arranging carbon nanotubes--strands of carbon atoms that can conduct electricity--into arrays with DNA molecules.
Once the nanotube array is meticulously constructed, the laboratory-generated DNA molecules could be removed, leaving an orderly grid of nanotubes. The nanotube grid, conceivably, could function as a data storage device or perform calculations.
Previous work to create grids using DNA
Potentially, DNA could address, or recognize, features as small as two nanometers. Cutting-edge chips today have features that average 45 nanometers.
"These are DNA nanostructures that are self-assembled into discrete shapes. Our goal is to use these structures as bread boards on which to assemble carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires, quantum dots," said Greg Wallraff, an IBM scientist and a lithography and materials expert working on the project. "What we are really making are tiny DNA circuit boards that will be used to assemble other components."
UPDATE:
The attachment sites on DNA, which is where the nanowires and transistors would attach on the template, can be made much closer together than with traditional pattern manufacturing techniques. With DNA, the attachment sites are 4nm to 6nm apart. Normally, they're about 45nm apart.
"Think of it as tiling a floor. These DNA pieces are like tiles," explained Gordon. "Each tile has some array of electronic components. Those tiles are placed on a chip in a larger array so there are thousands or millions on a chip. The second step, which we don't know how to do yet, would be to wire them all together. We've got sizes well below conventional lithography."
Wallraff said the next steps will be connect all the tiles together and check the defect levels during assembly.
Actually using this pattern technique is probably 10 to 20 years away, he noted.
Other work to enable self assembly of electronics:
A simple surface treatment technique demonstrated by a collaboration between researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Penn State and the University of Kentucky potentially offers a low-cost way to mass produce large arrays of organic electronic transistors on polymer sheets for a wide range of applications including flexible displays, “intelligent paper” and flexible sheets of biosensor arrays for field diagnostics.The researchers found that by applying a specially tailored pretreatment compound to the contacts before applying the organic semiconductor solution, they could induce the molecules in solution to self-assemble into well-ordered crystals at the contact sites. These structures grow outwards to join across the FET channel in a way that provides good electrical properties at the FET site, but further away from the treated contacts the molecules dry in a more random, helter-skelter arrangement that has dramatically poorer properties—effectively providing the needed electrical isolation for each device without any additional processing steps. The work is an example of the merging of device structure and function that may enable low cost manufacturing, and an area where organic materials have important advantages.
In creating chip arrays, DNA assembly might work as follows: scientists would first create scaffolds of designer DNA manipulated into specific shapes. Rothemund has made DNA structures in the shapes of circles, stars, and happy faces.
A pattern would then be etched into a photo-resistant surface with e-beam lithography and the combination of several interacting thin films. A solution of the designer DNA would then be poured on the patterned surface and the DNA would space themselves out according to the patterns on the substrate and the chemical/physical forces between the molecules.
The nanotubes would then be poured in. Interactions between the nanotubes and the DNA would occur until they formed the desired pattern. Single strand DNA, along with origami, could be used in concert.
Another key part in the system revolves around peptides that can bind to the DNA and a nonbiologically inspired molecule like a nanotube.
With DNA, chipmakers could phase out multibillion fabrication facilities stocked with lithography systems, which cost tens of millions of dollars, and the other "top-down" style equipment.
Potentially, DNA techniques could allow manufacturers to produce features that are smaller than patterns that could be achieved even with the most advanced lithography systems, predicted Wallraff. E-beam lithography, which is extremely difficult to use in mass manufacturing, goes down to 10 nanometers.
"Of course, the devil is in the details," said Wallraff. "These are self-assembly procedures and error rates--missing features could be the downfall."
FURTHER READING
Carbon nanotube transistor work at IBM
UPDATE: Combine this work to get to 2 nanometer feature sizes with configurable more customized processors and we can go from affordable exaflop computers to zettaflop supercomputers. Exaflop is 1000 petaflops, 1 million teraflops. Zettaflops is 1 million petaflops and 1 billion teraflops.
UPDATE: John E. Kelly, IBM's Director of Research, is focusing on four top research priorities. Each of the projects will get $100 million over the next two to three years, in hopes of generating at least $1 billion, each, in new revenue. The projects: inventing a successor to today's semiconductor, designing computers that process data much more efficiently, using math to solve complex business problems, and building massive clusters of computers that operate like a single machine—an approach called "cloud" computing.
Kelly foresees creating dozens of new joint ventures for research, which he calls "collaboratories," with countries, companies, and independent research outfits. One venture with Saudi Arabia, focusing on nanotechnology, was unveiled on Feb. 26. The two sides plan to develop technologies for solar energy and water desalinization.
In 2003, Kelly took a gamble and set up research alliances with a handful of partners, including Sony Electronics (SNE) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to share expenses and brainpower. The approach eventually paid off, as IBM's chip business returned to profitability and remained on the cutting edge of technology.
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A group at the California Institute of Technology, led by biomolecular engineer Niles Pierce, has created a DNA-based fabricator. This is a huge development in being able to program the reactions in biochemistry.
This is a system that allows the team to specify a piece of DNA with a desired shape and function, and then execute a molecular program to assemble it in a test tube. As an example, they used their system to construct a piece of DNA that walks along another strip of DNA. The researchers behind the approach predict that biochemical programming "languages" inspired by their work could let bioengineers create any number of desired molecular products and processes.
At the heart of the group's system are hairpin-shaped strands of DNA each about 10 nanometers long with three specific binding sites called "toeholds".
These hairpins can snap together in specific ways. When a hairpin is closed, for example, two out of its three binding sites are unavailable. But, if a suitable strand of DNA docks with it, the hairpin springs open.
A reaction between two DNA strands can also free up the exposed site on an attached hairpin, causing it to close once more.
In computer terms, the hairpins act as interconnected logic gates. "This elementary unit has one input port and two output ports," says Pierce. "And they can interact – the input port of one can receive an input from the output port of another."
The group has also developed a graphical way to represent the state of these molecular building blocks and the step-by-step interactions between them. These "reaction graphs" allow them to map out the assembly and disassembly steps needed to produce a desired sequence of reactions.
The necessary reactions are then translated into specific sequences of complementary DNA base pairs with the requisite binding characteristics. Finally, the program runs in a test tube that contains the specified mix of molecules.
Still, he says, a few years ago audience members laughed when he said he wanted to create a compiler to automate the process of encoding desired functions into DNA sequences. "Our field has now progressed to the point where the real question is not whether it can be done, but how far it can be pushed."
Some of Pierce's peers believe this kind of systematic biomolecular programming can be pushed very far indeed.
"It's great work," says computer scientist Erik Winfree, who is also at based Caltech, but was not involved with the work. "What's remarkable is that it develops a general way of creating a very diverse set of chemical reaction pathways. It opens a lot of doors."
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From physorg.com, R. Dean Astumian, a Physics Professor at the University of Maine, has recently proposed a concept in which molecular machines can operate arbitrarily close to chemical equilibrium at every instant of the cycle, and still perform work at the rate of several micrometers per second against piconewton loads. The study, “Adiabatic operation of a molecular machine,” is published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Illustration of the possible transitions for a catenane structure that consists of one large ring with three stations for two small rings. The two small rings move around the large ring to bind at a station. Each binding state is favored by a different energetic condition, as indicated. ©2007 PNAS. Image credit: R. Dean Astumian
“The main significance is conceptual – it changes the way we think about molecular motors,” Astumian told PhysOrg.com. “Much emphasis has been put on the ‘non-equilibrium’ aspects of the system, but in fact this is not really important. The motion of the rings here arises due to a combination of topology that break spatial symmetry, and the slow external modulation that breaks time symmetry. It is also important to recognize that, in the molecular world, we can truly have motors that operate with nearly 100% efficiency.”
Astumian’s example of such a molecular machine is a three-ring “catenane” structure that serves as a rotating motor. The catenane, about 3 nanometers in diameter, consists of one large ring with two smaller rings linked to the large ring, like rings on a keychain. Three binding stations on the large ring provide locations where the two small rings can bind, depending on the interaction energy between ring and station.
Astumian gets the small rings to move clockwise from station to station around the large ring, a movement that results in mechanical cycling. Further, he achieves this movement without any heat gain or heat loss and without a change of entropy, but simply by thermal noise due to Brownian motion. This type of “adiabatic” system is arbitrarily close to equilibrium at every point of the cycle.
The key to making the small rings move from station to station is by periodically modulating the interaction energy. The rings will bind to the station that requires the lowest interaction energy. This modulation must be done slowly enough not to generate heat, but at a sufficient rate to produce significant work.
He also mentions that there might be more creative architectures where counter-clockwise motions don’t undo the clockwise motions. He likens this mechanism to a ratcheting screwdriver used to drive a screw. When the ratchet turns counter-clockwise to reset itself, it releases so that it doesn’t undo the forward turn of the screw. Although a molecular machine would use thermal noise instead of external torque, the concept is similar. In the molecular machine, one of the small rings could be fixed to prevent counterclockwise motion.
“I would say that the biggest challenge is to arrange the molecules on a surface so that the movement can be used to do work on the outside world,” Astumian said. He added that the chemical structures have already been synthesized by David Leigh at the University of Edinburgh, as the next step in the development of the machines.
this system requires a fine balance between modulating slowly enough so that the system is in chemical and mechanical equilibrium at every instant, but rapidly enough to perform substantial work.
“I plan to extend the theory to explain the mechanism of biological motors,” Astumian said.
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CORRECTION: The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems has finally been released. Many groups were involved in the creation of the report. It was organized and led by Battelle with:
Technical Leadership team
K. Eric Drexler, Nanorex;
Alex Kawczak, Battelle Memorial Institute;
John Randall, Zyvex Labs
Project Management Team
Alex Kawczak, Battelle Memorial Institute;
K. Eric Drexler, Nanorex;
John Randall, Zyvex Labs;
Pearl Chin, Foresight Nanotech Institute;
Jim Von Ehr, Zyvex Labs
Editors
K. Eric Drexler, Nanorex;
John Randall, Zyvex Labs;
Stephanie Corchnoy, Synchrona;
Alex Kawczak, Battelle Memorial Institute;
Michael L. Steve, Battelle Memorial Institute
I have looked over the reports. They are useful and quite comprehensive.
Some of the newer nanopatterning methods need to be included.
Nanopantography is for splitting an ion beam into one billion beams repeating the same work.
A big impact application area is quantum wells and quantum dots for thermoelectric technology.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Part 1—The Road Map
* Introduction
* Atomic Precision: What, Why, and How?
* Atomically Precise Manufacturing
* Atomically Precise Components and Systems
* Modeling, Design, and Characterization
* Applications
* Agenda for Research and Call to Action
Part 2—Topics in Detail
* Components and Devices
* Systems and Frameworks
* Fabrication and Synthesis Methods
* Modeling, Design, and Characterization
Part 3—Working Group Proceedings [14.5 MB]
* Atomically Precise Fabrication
* Nanoscale Structures and Fabrication
* Motors and Movers
* Design, Modeling, and Characterization
* Applications
Technical reports are
Atomically Precise Fabrication
01 Atomically Precise Manufacturing Processes
02 Mechanosynthesis
03 Patterned ALE Path Phases
04 Numerically Controlled Molecular Epitaxy
05 Scanning Probe Diamondoid Mechanosynthesis [not Atomistic Modeling of Nanoscale Systems, this correction is from the author Robert Freitas]
06 Limitations of Bottom-Up Assembly
07 Nucleic Acid Engineering
08 DNA as an Aid to Self-Assembly
09 Self-Assembly
10 Protein Bioengineering Overview
11 Synthetic Chemistry
12 A Path to a Second Generation Nanotechnology
13 Atomically Precise Ceramic Structures
14 Enabling Nanoscience for Atomically-Precise Manufacturing of Functional Nanomaterials
Nanoscale Structures and Fabrication
15 Lithography and Applications of New Nanotechnology
16 Scaling Up to Large Production of Nanostructured Materials
17 Carbon Nanotubes
18 Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes
19 Oligomer with Cavity for Carbon Nanotube Separation
20 Nanoparticle Synthesis
21 Metal Oxide Nanoparticles
Motors and Movers
22 Biological Molecular Motors for Nanodevices
23 Molecular Motors, Actuators, and Mechanical Devices
24 Chemotactic Machines
Design, Modeling, and Characterization
25 Atomistic Modeling of Nanoscale Systems
26 Productive Nanosystems: Multi-Scale Modeling and Simulation
27 Thoughts on Prospects for New Characterization Tools
28 Characterization/Instrumentation Capabilities for Nanostructured Materials
Applications
29 Nanomedicine Roadmap: New Technology and Clinical Applications
30 Applications for Positionally Controlled Atomically Precise Manufacturing Capability
31 Piezoelectrics and Piezo Applications
32 Fuel Cell Electrocatalysis: Challenges and Opportunities
33 Atomic Precision Materials Development in PEM Fuel Cells
34 Hydrogen Storage
35 The Potential of Atomically Precise Manufacturing in Solid State Lighting
36 Towards Gaining Control of Nanoscale Components and Organization of Organic
Photovoltaic Cells
37 Impact of Atomically Precise Manufacturing on Transparent Electrodes
38 Atomically Precise Fabrication for Photonics: Waveguides, Microcavities
39 Impact of Atomically Precise Manufacturing on Waveguide Applications
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D-Wave Senior Scientist and condensed matter physicist Mohammad Amin gave a highly technical presentation at MIT. (54 slides in this power point presentation) Dwave recently demonstrated a 28 qubit computer. They are predicting that they will have 512 qubit and 1024 qubit quantum computer systems in 2008. If Dwave is successful then in 2009 it will begin to greatly accelerate the development of molecular nanotechnology which needs better molecular modeling.
Adiabatic quantum computer (AQC) required conditions
AQC Theory from 2001 requires an energy gap
AQC Theory predicts energy levels
Experimental measurements show energy levels consistent with quantum noise
Experimental measurements fit the theory
What the difference regions of quantum effects, mixed effects and classical effects would be
Interpreting several Measurements
The experimental results are indicating that Dwave is looking at quantum results
FURTHER READING
The point of view of Dwave skeptic Scott Aaronson
Amin and Berkley maintained that their 16-qubit device was indeed a quantum computer and their evidence was that simulations of its behavior that took quantum mechanics into account gave, they said, a better fit to the data than simulations that didn’t. On the other hand, they said they were not able to test directly for the presence of any quantum effect such as entanglement. (They agreed that entanglement was a non-negotiable requirement for quantum computing.)
Dwave CTO Geordie Rose replies in the commentsFinally, the variety of demos we’ve run (including sudoku, image matching, etc.) are not “crap”. They use a novel hybrid approach to integrating QCs into classical solvers. In hindsight it is pretty obvious that to make any QC useful it needs to be integrated with the best known classical techniques regardless of what quantum algorithm it’s embodying. And while I’ve said this 10^87 times I’ll say it again: what we’re doing is explicitly heuristic and has no global optimality guarantees. While you can use the system we’re building on decision problems it is natively an optimization solver for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems
From another commenter:
How then does Dwave “solve” the image feature matching problem using just 28 bits, for images that are large and have many features (such as those that Dwave used in their SC demo)? Apparently they “cheat” and break the overall problem into many small maximum common subgraph problems (of a size that can be encoded in 28 bits). Each small MCS problem is “solved” on the QC, and then the solutions are somehow combined classically.
Like the soduku, solve the 3X3 squares iteravely then combine to a 9X9 solution.
It is not a cheat in that they are using the quantum system to its best ability by combining with our current best methods. To only solve problems with quantum systems is like having only allowing pencil and paper on tests when the real world has regular computers, wikipedia and Google.
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I had written in 2006 about the Military Nanotechnology book by Altmann
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has reviewed the book.
Some consideration should be given to
1. What are the non-nanotech ways that production could greatly increase ?
Breakthroughs that allow expanded reel to reel production. ECD Ovonics quantum control devices made from polymers able to produced without or with limited performance degradation relative to silicon. Allowing for MEMS and computers to be produced far more quickly. MEMS can be used to create UAVs.
Breakthroughs with arrays of MEMS/NEMS to speed up 3D printing from the nanoscale up.
Mere force multiplier effects or the enabling of a more antiseptic war does not really alter the geopolitical situation. Especially if the US and China are near the lead in new production increases.
Also, there is no motivation for global governance if it is primarily the existing major powers that get more production and maintain a lead and dominance over others.
I think the existing national powers and the existing political structure could adapt to the most common and likely scenarios without ceding sovereignty.
2. How important is production relative to strategy and tactics or radically new systems capabilities ?
More clever usage of relatively mundane conventional weapons and non-weapons technology could be used to far greater effect. Air superiority and ruthlessness (similar to the Romans over Carthage or using the WW2 russian tactics of scorched earth but on enemy terrain) could be used to genocide a country in weeks.
Merely the production of a lot more robotic weapons does not overcome nuclear deterrent.
Look there is a swarm of UAV's crossing the Ocean... launch ... launch.
How is that different from look there are ICBMs launching and crossing the Ocean..launch...launch?
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The Foresight Nanotech Institute awards prizes each year for people who've made noteworthy contributions to molecular manufacturing.
The student prize went to Fung Suong Ou, for "Devices and Machines on a Single Nanowire." He used a combinatorial approach to fabricate one-dimensional structures composed of carbon nanotubes and metal nanowires.
The communication prize was earned by Robert Freitas for his decade-plus of work telling people about the benefits of medical applications of molecular manufacturing. His highly detailed and informative Nanomedicine books are available in full online, as well as Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines.
The Feynman theory prize was won by David A. Leigh, for artificial molecular motor and machine design in the realm of Brownian motion.
The Feynman experimental prize went to Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, for synthesizing molecular machines including a molecular "muscle."
FURTHER READING
Paper by Fraser Stoddart, Evaluation of synthetic linear motor-molecule actuation energetics
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Computerworld discusses the impact of Sputnick on the development of computer technology and the internet and high risk/high payoff technology research.
The article is making the case that the United States science and technology research community has seen a return to a culture which is less likely to pursue high risk/high payoff technology research.
There is a struggle between those who want more High risk, high payoff scientific and technological research and development and those who want only timid, incremental goals who also ridicule even the description of a high payoff technological possibility.
DARPA people are trying to defend themselves from the charge taht they are not interested in high-risk and high payoff research and are leaving the United States open to another nation surprising the United States with an unchallenged success in a high payoff research area.
DARPA continues to be interested in high-risk, high-payoff research," says DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker.
Walker offers the following projects as examples of DARPA's current research efforts:
- Computing systems able to assimilate knowledge by being immersed in a situation
- Universal [language] translation
- Realistic agent-based societal simulation environments
- Networks that design themselves and collaborate with application services to jointly optimize performance
- Self-forming information infrastructures that automatically organize services and applications
- Routing protocols that allow computers to choose the best path for traffic, and new methods for route discovery for wide area networks
- Devices to interconnect an optically switched backbone with metropolitan-level IP networks
- Photonic communications in a microprocessor having a theoretical maximum performance of 10 TFLOPS (trillion floating-point operations per second)
The Wall Street Journal has journalists arguing against artificial intelligence projects with greater than human AGI goals.There are those like Dale Carrico who argue against talking about "Superlative technology". Superlative technology being potentially high payoff technology like molecular nanotechnology and artificial greater than human general intelligence.There are many others who argue against projects with agressive goal in energy, space and nanotechnology. Often these are the same people who lament the lack of adequate technological solutions for climate change, peak oil and other potential societal problems.
Many seem to indicate that there is culture that encourages timid technological goals:
Farber sits on a computer science advisory board at the NSF, and he says he has been urging the agency to "take a much more aggressive role in high-risk research." He explains, "Right now, the mechanisms guarantee that low-risk research gets funded. It's always, 'How do you know you can do that when you haven't done it?' A program manager is going to tell you, 'Look, a year from now, I have to write a report that says what this contributed to the country. I can't take a chance that it's not going to contribute to the country.'"
A report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, released Sept. 10, indicates that at least some in the White House agree. In "Leadership Under Challenge: Information Technology R&D in a Competitive World," John H. Marburger, science advisor to the president, said, "The report highlights in particular the need to ... rebalance the federal networking and IT research and development portfolio to emphasize more large-scale, long-term, multidisciplinary activities and visionary, high-payoff goals.
According to the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy at the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development in 2001, the last year for which figures are available. And more than 95% of that R&D is engineering or development, not long-range research, Lazowska says.
The old head of ARPA, Charles M. Herzfeld, speaks on the old and new situationWe created the whole artificial intelligence community and funded it. And we created the computer science world. When we started [IPTO], there were no computer science departments or computer science professionals in the world. None.
There certainly has been a change, and it's not for the better. But it may be inevitable. I'm not sure one could start the old ARPA nowadays. It would be illegal, perhaps. We now live under tight controls by many people who don't understand much about substance.
What was unique about IPTO was that it was very broad technically and philosophically, and nobody told you how to structure it. We structured it. It's very hard to do that today.
Interviewer Question: But why? Why couldn't a Licklider come in today and do big things?
Because the people that you have to persuade are too busy, don't know enough about the subject and are highly risk-averse. When President Eisenhower said, "You, Department X, will do Y," they'd salute and say, "Yes, sir." Now they say, "We'll get back to you." I blame Congress for a good part of it. And agency heads are all wishy-washy. What's missing is leadership that understands what it is doing.
If the system does not fund thinking about big problems, you think about small problems.
Thus the big ideas for big problems have gone mostly outside the system.
SENS, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (for radical life extension), raises private fundsThe Singularity Institute and companies working on AGI are outside mainstream government and corporate funding.The nanofactory collaboration is privately funded with some use of university resources controlled by the researchers.There was a small UK government funded project for software control of matterRobert Bussard's nuclear fusion project was funded by the NavyTri-alpha Energy's colliding beam fusion was privately funded for over 40 million dollarsThe NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts program was cancelledI think there should be at least 20% of research funds (government and corporate) devoted to high risk/high payoff research. This is a model that Google is using to substantial success.
FURTHER READING
The problem of false negatives in selection of technology development projects Not choosing to pursue a technology development project which in fact would have succeeded and should have been chosen for development.
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The Register discusses the CRN conference, where I was one of the presenters
I need to correct some misunderstanding from a lack of clarity in one of my presentation slides.
Register person had stated I was saying molecular manufacturing would happen in 2015. My prediction for a nanofactory level of capability in molecular manufacturing is 2015-2023 If a lot of bad choices are made and the development work turns out to be surprisingly difficult then 2024-2030 is very possible. However, the almost molecular manufacturing capability will be getting better and better so I am not clear what would be preventing someone from bootstrapping to the full capability for the longer time frame.
One of my presentation slides gave the impression that societies energy problems would persist for decades after the arrival of full blown molecular manufacturing.
Energy, space and infrastructure problems which are some of the biggest problems now and will take the longest to fix, will potentially be very easy to solve after molecular manufacturing arrives. The expection is whatever ongoing bad choices we are making as a society can continue to prevent problems from being solved.
This is currently the case with many of todays problems. The technical capability has been available to solve energy and space access, however the collective choices made in different parts of society have prevented us from getting over the hurdles needed to implement solutions.
For example, corruption and violence in Africa prevents those countries from experiencing an economic boom similar to China and Vietnam and other countries.
The Africa-lite levels of corruption and violence in countries like the United States and Europe and China could prevent the full potential of molecular manufacturing from being realized. Just as current bad funding choices are delaying the development of molecular manufacturing.
The technology can enable the fixes. It is we who could continue to screw it up as we have up to this point under-utilizing possible solutions.
Technology, even powerful technology such as molecular manufacturing is not beyond the power of bad choices to screw it up. I am somewhat less concerned about the bad choices that could lead to extinction (although those are a concern) than I am about massive civilization underperformance. Massive civilization underperformance has been a persistent problem throughout history, which I would like to see reduced. Also, if it was reduced civilization would be more robust and better able to handle and prevent extinction risks as well.
We marvel at the 50 trillion world GDP (70 trillion a purchasing power parity basis). However, bad governance and bad choices throughout even relatively recent history have caused the underperformance of the world economy. China did not have to be a basketcase economy from 1900 to 1975 (and even from 1500-1900). India also could have started its climb out of poverty decades or centuries earlier. The people in India who cling to a stifling bureaucracy and the systems which encourage that behavior could have been removed and bureaucracy reduced sooner. The world economy could easily be two to three times bigger than it is now.
The United States could have been building nuclear plants for power without the 30 year gap. 400 more nuclear plants would have meant having the 80% French level of nuclear electricity generation. $300 billion/year in pollution and health costs could be saved. The reduced medical costs would make medicare more solvent and have reduced taxes and better balanced budgets. There would also have been fewer wars for oil.
Even the measurement of size of the world economy does not address how much useless busy work or destructive work there is. Using 40% of the railway and 10% of freight to move 1 billion tons in the USA of coal (6-7 billion tons worldwide) generates a lot of GDP activity. However, this is including a lot of destructive and unnecessary activity as a positive.
The lost opportunity cost from bad research and development choices and from research and development funding system inefficiencies are very high. Alan Shalleck discusses how the first few years and billions of dollars in nanotechnology budgets have gone to
establishing nanotechnology laboratory facilities, outfitting these laboratories with nanotech capable instrumentation, finding and recruiting nonscientists who were fascinated by the nanotechnology opportunity and funding basic nanoscience research.
There was no expectation of any nanotechnology product. There was no goal or plan by design.
No stated goal means no standard of achievement to be held accountable No stated goal or objective meant that there could no specific genetically modified food controversy, because there would not be nothing made and no stated plans for production there could be no controversial impact. This is a systemic wasteful and underperforming behavior. My main hope and expectation is that increasing true competition from other countries will force more productive behavior and bolder efforts and plans.
I think there are some trends that will force a higher standard of competence and rational evidence based thinking. The
flattening of the world and increasing global competition will mean less places for incompetence to persist and dominate. Open hypercompetition lets the winner win faster and prevents the idiots from letting screw ups persist.
The shape of the future will be decided by an ongoing battle between incompetence and selfish corrupt decision making versus super-technology and efficient and rapid assessment and analysis with evidence based choices.
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Dexter at the IEEE spectrum blog asks "What’s the point?" of all of the billions being spent in the name of something called nanotechnology
He talked also about the nanotechnology funding race and asks what is at the finish line
My answer around the policies of not having a point for the programs. It is a specific choice for the funding not to be accountable to deliver on any visions. No goal then they cannot be criticized for not meeting the goal. No goals then no controversy over positives and negatives of the goal.:
This is one of the side effect problems of creating an overly broad definition of nanotechnology. You have a lot of trouble measuring and defining real progress.
Also, without clearly defined goals that would have large societal impact, one cannot define the point of doing it.
Specific projects and the details of the work that is being developed by scientists needs to be considered.
Currently the increasing nanotechnology research budgets have no more meaning than increasing science research budgets. Good stuff can randomly happen but you don't know when or what.
There are clear plans of development pathways with specific kinds of nanotechnology, which would have high impact if developed. However, as is commonly known almost all of those plans and planners have been marginalized.
Collectly the mainstream choice has been "let us not rally to those plans". So you are left with the "what's the point" problem or the "the give me the money and I am going to make whatever I want, then occasionally if we like any of the things that comes from X billion per year we will publicize a victory".
The lets spend billions for some short camping trips to the moon. Hey look we got Tang, isn't that wonderful and of course pretty pictures, great stories, bragging rights and a psychological edge in some geopolitics. The main goals came up short of real clear broad impact, but spin offs we got spin offs. Let us put political spin on the spin offs. There are space satellites for communications etc.. but those who did go to the moon and spent less money also have those things too.
Clear is we invent combustion engines and mass production. The impact is loads of cars and trucks and transformed transportation and transformed product production. There are plenty of spin off effects and products, but the focus is less on the better cup holders.
Even with the lack of a "what's the point" goal or set of clearly defined goals then each of the thousands of projects in each country needs to be examined to understand its potential. Many do not have and will not have a point or impact so those can be filtered out fairly quickly.
The NNI and others have chosen not to make a big deal about any truly high potential societal transforming goals or possibilities.
They do not want to overcommit in case it does not pan out.
http://www.nano.gov/html/facts/hype_promise.html
Thus they spin the things (which have so far been not much different from other non-nanotech products) as they happen or as they become slam dunkable.
The do not overcommit policy means that any point has to be a super-conservative objective based on existing work and progress.
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Tim Harper at cientifica has put up a name calling article with accusations that those who believe in mechanosynthesis are ignoring science
Here is his article:
The mechnosynthesis fans at places like the Centre for Irresponisble Promotion of Unfeasble Nanotechnologies always get a bit hot under the collar when criticised, and the first line of attack is always to quote Lord Kelvin’s famous 1882 remark that “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”
I am not convinced that this is a valid argument when looking at molecular nanotechnology as we have had almost twenty years of proponents saying that some kind of Utopian singularity is just around the corner - surely this would be also worth quoting as an example of a failed prediction?
Kelvin based his opinion on prevailing scientific opinion at the time, whereas the Drexlerians ignore scientific opinion in the same way that advocates of intelligent design and creationism ignore the evidence of the fossil record. That probably explains why they are given short shrift by the mainstream scientific community, and resort to dismissing two and half thousand years of science for the sake of a bunch of beliefs backed up with no evidence.
Perhaps this is a job for renowned sceptic and arch debunker Richard Dawkins?
Here is my response:
1. What relevant specific science has been dismissed ?
2.Here is a link to theoretical and experimental work that supports mechanosynthesis as a possible and promising approach
http://www.molecularassembler.com/Nanofactory/AnnBibDMS.htm
Also, molecular manufacturing is not and has not been only about mechnosynthesis. There were papers by Drexler and others about protein pathways and other means to achieve molecular manufacturing. This information is publicly available from the Foresight conferences and publications.
3. Certain predictions with dates attached may have been wrong. Open ended predictions that X is impossible are wrong when X happens regardless of when it is. A prediction that Y will happen is not wrong after Z years if there was no time limit attached to it. A Y prediction without date ranges and conditions like actual effort being expended to achieve Y are not that useful.
4. If the mechanosynthesis view is so obviously flawed, then come on Tim Harper, why do you need Richard Dawkins. Bring on your specific issues and criticisms. I, Brian Wang, am calling you out. Cite what it is that you believe are the "justifiable and worthy scientific predictions or projects".
I think your name-calling is without proper basis and justification. I think your accusation that science has been dismissed is false. I think that the belief that molecular manufacturing and mechanosynthesis is feasible has evidence.
I will return the name calling favor. I think that your site and organization should be call UNscientifica.
I think that if you cannot back up your accusations and then do not then retract them, that you are a useless name calling punk.
You call yourself one of the world's foremost experts on commercialisation of technologies [on his profile at this website]. We can put that to the test. We can put up a public bet on whether molecular manufacturing or mechanosynthesis of the type that you criticize gets commercialized. Certainly something that the "world's foremost expert" can handle.
Tim says the nanotechnology that CRN describes is unfeasible. Unfeasible should mean that it never will happen. So Tim should feel fairly comfortable looking at some minor milestones in the 30 to 50 year timeframes.
UPDATE:
Note: I am perfectly willing to be polite, but since Tim has initiated the level of the discourse then he needed to get a taste of his own abuse. I wonder why he got hot under the collar from my criticism ?
Tim replied to my comment of his posting via email. He claims he does not want to publish "such histrionics" as were in my comment. My interpretation is that he only publishes his own histrionics.
I say that this shows that he can dish out insults but cannot take it.
I say that this also shows that he is unwilling to defend what he claims. He does not defend his own attacks against mechanosynthesis or molecular manufacturing or his claim to be one of the world's foremost experts on technological commercialization.
ANOTHER UPDATE
The only comment that Tim is willing to have is a link to his own articles He claims that he does not want to spend the time to engage in debate. He points to another one of his
old articles which he calls a past debate on this which he does not want to spend more time. However, looking at that link we see that he took the time to toss around insults and accusations that have no evidence. So the pattern is that every so often Tim Harper decides to toss out insults and baseless accusations, but he has never engaged in a debate where he provides any scientific evidence to back up his claims of lack of science for molecular manufacturing.
BTW: Don't buy his nanoparticle drug delivery market study. Some simple online research can provide all of that information and save you $5000.
Abraxis Oncology, a division of American Pharmaceutical Partners, Inc. made the first nanoparticle drug delivery system. The market leader in nanoemulsions, Elan Pharmaceuticals Inc., has developed a nano-crystallisation system for milling drug compounds to nanometre scale particles to improve biological uptake into patients. The system had been successfully applied to the Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. Rapamune drug for use in immunosupression during transplant surgery and the Merck & Co., Inc. Emend drug for control of chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting.
AlphaRX has a TB nanoparticle drug delivery treatment 
