How The Nano “Revolution”
Happened
0.000000001
Kasetsart University
November, 2004
But first, what is nano?
1 nm = 1 × 10-9 m
500 nm  Visible Light (blue-green)
1 Å = 1 × 10-10 m  typical chemical bond (1.5 Å)
1 Å = 0.1 nm
1.09 Å
H
C
0.109 nm
0.154 nm
C
1.54 Å
H
C
C
Does the Language of Units Matter?
Body temperature  100oF  37oC = “hot”
1 foot = about the size of your foot! No such simple,
physiological reference for the meter (about the length
of your leg?)
1000 mL = a lot easier for chemists to imagine than 1 dm3
1 atm = a lot easier to imagine than 101,325 Pa
The discipline of Chemistry often loses the battle of
language. The nano revolution is yet another such case,
because the natural “unit” of Chemistry is the
Angstrom.
More Syllables
Angstrom = 2 syllables
Nanometer = 4 syllables
So….old people, who have learned that no
one listens anyway, prefer Angstrom to
Nanometers.
Anyway, something happens at ~1 nm
Technical Interface Social Impact
Quantum vs. Classical
Molecular View vs.
Materials View
Molecule vs. “device”
Learn fundamentals vs.
Learn Toolbox
Chemists & Chemical
Engineers vs. Materials
Scientists & Engineers
Example: CdSeZnS quantum dots
Absorption & emission
of 5 different sizes
Dispersed in toluene. These particles have many
advantages over conventional fluorophores—not
easily bleached, broad excitation spectrum, narrow &
tunable emission, long fluorescence lifetimes.
http://smb.chem.ucla.edu/research/nc.htm
Gold particles made by alfalfa, a forage crop
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/alfalfa.html
Gardea-Torresdey UTEP
A Brief History of Nano
Richard P. Feynman
http://www.feynmanonline.com/
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
“There is plenty of room at the bottom.”
December, 1959, exposition of just how much might
be achieved by focusing on the enormous gap between
the nano world and the big world.
•This talk was a social function—an after dinner talk.
•Replication of machines, each smaller than parent.
•Information on head of pin and in head of pin.
Who knows the word “pin”?
1/16”=1.5875 mm
= 1,587,500 nm
=15,875,000 Å
1/32”=0.79375 mm
=793,750 nm
=7,937,500 Å
Pin head volume: 1.6 × 1018 Å3
Age of universe in seconds: ~3 x 1017
Miniaturization at the dawn of the
space age is not as we now imagine.
Miniaturization was on everybody’s mind, following
Sputnik – small guidance systems, radios, control
systems.
“That’s nothing. That’s the most primitive, halting
step in the direction I intend to discuss.”
“Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the
Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?”
Visual approach: simply shrink the text.
This requires the text to be reduced by 25,000
times.
Each letter then would then be several tens of
atoms large.
“…there is no question that there is
enough room on the head of a pin
to put all of the Encyclopedia
Britannica.”
Coded approach: dots and dashes,
e.g. let A  Also: the pin has a finite thickness;
we can use that, too.
Voxel = 3-D pixel
125 atoms
All information in all the world’s 24 million books (in
1959) will now fit into the head of a pin.
A billion tiny lathes
Feynman raised the idea that a machine could
make a replica of itself, only smaller.
Then, the smaller machine could make a replica of
itself.
And so on and so on…
Feynman allowed that such machines might one
day manipulate just small number of atoms, and
he didn’t worry much about thermal vibration—
the kT problem.
The Two Feynman Prizes
The first was for reducing information on a page
by 25,000 times, so it could be read by an electron
microscope.
“And I want to offer another prize…of (a thousand
dollars) to the first guy who makes an operating
electric motor – a rotating electric motor which
can be controlled from the outside and, not
counting the lead-in wires, is only 1/64th inch
cube.”
1/64th inch = 0.4 mm = 400 m = 400,000 nm
William McClellan’s
award-winning
motor…but it broke no
new ground. It is just a
conventional motor, made
very small using
galvanometer wire and
assembled under a
microscope.
K. Eric Drexler, “author,
theoretical researcher, and
policy advocate focused on
emerging technologies and
their consequences for the
future.” -- The Foresight Institute
http://www.foresight.org/FI/Drexler.html
About Drexler
•
•
•
•
Almost my age.
Spent part of his youth in Denver, my home town.
Obviously, having a career of higher impact!
I do not know how much science he has actually
done. He clearly thinks about science a lot.
• Maybe compare to Leo Szilard of a previous
generation? (Szilard thought about nuclear
weapons and their social implications.)
Anyway, the point is…
• Drexler was interested in space colonization during his
MIT years (1970’s).
• Began to think of ways to make machines that
manipulate matter – e.g., why not a nanomachine that
converts grass to meat to replace this “machine” in the
“big world”?
• In the 1970’s the best manipulators of molecules were the
biotech people, so why not imagine proteins—maybe
synthetic—that would follow codes—maybe like DNA—to
do what we want?
• Drexler’s ideas were independent of Feynman, whose
1959 banquet speech was, by that time, largely forgotten.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Vol. 78, No. 9, pp. 5275-5278, September 1981
Chemistry section
Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular
manipulation
KEY WORDS: molecular machinery/protein design/synthetic chemistry/computation/tissue characterization
K. Eric Drexler
Space Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Communicated by Arthur Kantrowitz, June 4, 1981
ABSTRACT: Development of the ability to design protein molecules will open a path to the fabrication of devices to
complex atomic specifications, thus sidestepping obstacles facing conventional microtechnology . This path will involve
construction of molecular machinery able to position reactive groups to atomic precision. It could lead to great advances
in computational devices and in the ability to manipulate biological materials. The existence of this path has implications
for the present.
“it seems difficult to maintain that nonprotein
machine components cannot be built and assembled”
Big world
Function
Bio/nano world
Struts, beams
Transmit force,
hold positions
Transmit
tension
Convert energy
to motion
Hold things
Store & read
programs
Microtubules,
cellulose
Collagen, silk
Cables
Motors
Containers
Programmed
control
Flagella
Vesicles, cells
Genetic system
Clinton/Gore
What did Feynman think of Drexler?
“That’s simple stuff. It’s obvious. Why
doesn’t he work on something difficult?”
*according to author Ed Regis, Feynman was a guest at a Drexler party, and was asked what he
thought by another guest, who was unaware that he was that Richard Feynman.
US Government Studies
1995
It is unclear which fabrication method will best
succeed… Areas that are important…include:
• Macromolecular design and folding
• Self-assembly methods
• Catalysis
• Dendrimers, fullerenes and other novel structures
• Bioenergetics, nanobatteries, and ultrasounddriven chemistry
• Semiconductoro-organic/biological interfaces
• Miniaturization and massive parallelization of
(surface force microscopy)
• Molecular modeling tools
1995
• “Demonstration of assembly, control of chemistry
and practical component and integration are
important.”
• Produce material parts at nanoscale
• Process the parts into components
• Order the components and interconnect
• Control massive collection of miniature parts and
systems
• Provide power
How to coordinate such an effort among
NSF, NIH, DARPA, NIST, Industry?
Dangers
•
•
•
•
•
Lethal and specific poisons
Potent drugs/new forms of drug abuse
Uncontrollable viruses
Sabotage by miniature robotic attackers
Competition with superior artificial
intelligence
2001 Report: A broader technology report,
with a more realistic, limited approach with
benefits in the short term
• Clothes that respond to weather, interface with
information systems, monitor health and deliver
medicines, protect wounds.
• Personal identification & security.
• Buildings and cars that adjust to weather.
• Integration of chemical, fluidic, optical and
mechanical systems with biological functions and
computer logic.
• Artificial tissue growth for heart, blood vessels.
• Functional materials—e.g., polypeptides.
2001 – broader impacts
• Accelerating pace of technology—lifelong learning.
• Increasing interdisciplinarity.
• Competition—e.g., with EU (in 1995, the concern seemed
to be Japan).
• Reduced privacy.
• Too much knowledge: if nanosensors of brain function
teach us how we form false memories, will we have to
know the mental state of a witness in a murder trial?
• Nanorobots--”…it seems unlikely that macro-scale objects
could be constructed using molecular manufacturing
within the 2015 timeframe.”
Some Impressions of Nano
STM image of DNA
Nanowires from electrodeless
reduction of Ag onto DNA. The
wires get thicker with each exposure
to the AgNO3 solution.
Top-down,
lithography,
epitaxy, etc.
We’re a long way from
self-replicating, reducing
machines.
Bottom-up,
chemical assembly
Should it win a Feynman Prize ?
IBM spelled out using 35 atoms of Xe
Another Classic Nanophoto from IBM
Nanotechnology viewpoints
• Nanoscience may viewed in many ways.
• Some people think it is all hype!
• Some people think it distracts from the
fundamental studies that got us this far.
• Some people don’t care—just want a job!
My provisional viewpoint
I am still not sure!
• Some of Nano is definitely hype.
• So what? Take the money and have fun!
• Science has always oscillated between opportunistic
exploration and fundamental studies. That the
pendulum has swung towards exploration and away
from basics science is no cause for alarm.
• Students should still learn fundamentals so they can
be ready for the next trend (and not make idiots of
themselves during this trend cycle).
• The emergence of Nano probably is a symptom of the
aging of Chemistry—or maybe Chemistry remaking
itself.
Chemistry as we know it
Needs periodic table!
Many new Nano alphabets?
• Dendrimer
generations
•
•
•
•
Fullerenes: C60, C70, etc.
Even silica particles of different sizes???
Various nano-rods
DNA parts with complementary “glue”
ATGC
TACG
We Hobbits can ride the great
shoulders of the ents.
Treebeard
While it is helpful to know as
much as possible of the past,
perhaps the immediate future
belongs to visionaries who know
how to put together capabilities.
This is a new approach. It seems
to underlie much of
nanotechnology—application of
old facts, with rather less
attention paid to fundamentals.
http://fan.theonering.net/middleearthtours/ents.html
Ruska, Binnig, Rohrer
Origins
We can thank colloid
chemists and
polymer chemists,
like these Nobel
prize winners, for
establishing some
of the language
and methods for
studying material
on the nanometer
scale.
Often it has been
macromolecular
greatness that
contributes to
nanotech.
Onsager
Heeger, Shirakawa, McDiarmid
Svedberg
Rayleigh
Flory
De Gennes
Staudinger
Langmuir
Debye
Merrifield
Confession and Caveat
I am a physically-inclined macromolecular
scientist, not a nanotechnologist.
Already the nano field is very large, so even
the most best nano expert would not be
able to cover all of it.
Let’s just have fun with some of the nano
possibilities.
Nano Centers
UCLA/UCSB: CNSI
http://www.cnsi.ucla.edu/news.html
Institute for Nanosoldier Technologies
Rice
CBM2
References
Nano, by E. Regis. Little, Brown & Co. Boston, 1995 (T174.7 R44)
Nanocosm, by W.I. Atkinson, Amacom, New York, 2003 (T174.7 A88)
The Global Technology Revolution, Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and their
Synergies with Information Technology by 2015, prepared for the
National Intelligence Council, by P. S. Anton, R. Silberglitt, J. Schneider,
Rand Corporation, National Defense Research Institute, Santa Monica,
2001 (T173.8 A58)
The Potential of Nanotechnology for Molecular Manufacturing, by M.
Nelson, C. Shipbaugh, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, 1995 (T174.7 N45)