Hall believes that just as computers are getting ever cheaper and smarter, nanotechnology will follow the same timeline and price improvement track. Nanofactories will make stuff out of raw materials such as the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These four elements make up approximately 96 percent of the human body along with a few other trace elements. Certainly ordinary objects are made out almost entirely of these four elements. Some of the items that could be build using nanofactories (fabrication machines) include:

• Consumer electronics like Apple’s iPods and iPhones. It is reasonably likely that we will be able to make electronics out of fabrication machines, though not from completely raw elements. However, there will be enough reconfigurable, low level stuff that could be synthesized as components.
• Bicycles, presumably using epoxy materials with nanotubes in it
• Cups of coffee and tea (like Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation ordering “tea, earl grey, hot”) – This should be a very simple thing to do. Coffee, and food in general, would be made from specially prepared concoctions of amino acid, protein, and carbohydrate complexes. Unlinking and linking amino acids is easier than pure “from the ground up” synthesis.
• Diamonds
• Eggs – to eat but not to hatch or that are alive because there are a lot of protein tricks that we can get around. Producing livable creatures via synthesis is not foreseeable in the near future, but perhaps much, much later.
• Folding furniture – easily produced by a fabrication machine, and it will be expected that the thing comes out of the machine in a folded up form to be unfolded after purchase.
• Gadgets and Gizmos – Remarkably complicated circuitry is easy to manufacture within the gadget.
• Headphones – They are bulky right now, and could be made smaller
• Ice cream – Temperature regulation will be possible within the machine. Instead of synthesizing a steak and then cooking it on the stove, you would synthesize a steak that has already been cooked and is hot
• Jackets – A clothing producing synthesizer will look like a closet, not like a desktop machine. When you step into your closet, you will see a full length mirror, and as you chose the ones you like, an image of what you would look like in the clothing that you choose would show. Then you could choose what you like
• Knives – Home synthesized knives would be made out of ceramic since the metals that we use today are not going to be the materials of choice to use with synthesizers. It is very possible that we are moving towards a post-metallic world.
• Lights – Producing power handling material is getting easy to do and we will be able to do it in any shape and color.
• Money – How do you keep people from going off and just printing their own counterfeit money? It is not as bad a problem as one might think, since everything is going to be connected to a computer so that paper money will just become obsolete. Hall said we do not need to worry; the economy will not collapse.
• More Nanofactories! – This will be more of a social impact than the money thing. Hall thinks self-replicating technology is amazing!
• Office Supplies – virtual reality offices
• Perambulators – Good old fashion stuff will be easy to make. The only problem is that there were a lot of heavy metals in these objects, which the synthesizers will not use.
• Tennis racquets – We will be able to synthesize very nice looking fake wood.
• Utility Fog – changing shape mega structures of programmable material that may act like a gas. This a much longer term invention.
• Watches – contact lenses that are full function displays as well
• Voluntars – any kind of transportation device can be changed in your garage everyday
• Yurts – You could construct an abode with all the comforts of home when going camping with a fabricator on your back, with air conditioning and lighting. It would probably use cellulose from trees.
• No zircons though!

Toth-Fejel stated that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t make it.” Nanotech needs to follow these guidelines:

• Accuracy
• Precision
• Reliability, repeatability, reproducibility
• Traceability
• Calibration
• Tolerance
• Quality

Trying to build independent chemical reactions and controlling where they are is very difficult to do. It is also very difficult to connect nanotubes together. Connecting them takes stepwise reactions, and there are a lot of them. We also need molecular actuators. In addition to using probes or tips, one could use pores to force DNA through to place atoms to make nanoactuators.

DNA origami is easy to do and is easily reproducible. The process uses DNA because it has such good molecular recognition properties. One is limited to 7000 base pairs when constructing molecular pictures. Helper strands have a self complimentary region that creates a bump in the strain, if you know the actual sequence of the DNA, and therefore one can write with the bumps to make pictures or words out of a few atoms. These same kinds of ideas can facilitate DNA mediated multistrand nanotube fabrication and metamaterials.

The ultimate goal of building nanomaterials is to build a desktop nanofactory appliance. What if you could “print” up a copy of your computer or another nanofactory? What if you could make diamonds quickly and cheaply and use these diamonds to build skyscrapers up to 300 km up for use as accelerators so you can get out of lower orbit?

Because there is a limited amount of carbon in the world, it is not feasible for everyone to make a nanofactory, especially if the primary source for carbon is CO₂ in the atmosphere, government intervention will be necessary. This could require the atmosphere becoming property to better manage this resource.

If you shuffle around the same atoms found in coal, you could get a diamond. Arranging atoms allows for greater precision, diversity, and lower manufacturing costs. Suppose that you can build anything you want with the best materials, such as diamond? Diamond is:

• Strong
• Hard
• Not reactive
• Dense
• Impresses women

Diamond is an amazing material. It will allow us to build extremely small mechanisms such as joints, buckeyball bearings, tubes, planetary gears, and neon pumps that pump individual atoms.

Making diamond today involves taking hydrogen and carbon, adding energy, and creating highly reactive molecules that settle into a diamond film. There is very little control as to position of atoms. Molecular tools would enable us to synthesize stable diamond structures with atomic precision.

We will be able to make almost anything of high complexity. There are over 100 elements in the periodic table, which are over 100 tools we can use to enable a vast range of new activities. Of these 100 elements, three elements – hydrogen, carbon, and germanium – have been chosen by Merkle for specific utilization. Many things are made out of hydrogen and carbon and their structures can become quite rigid. Germanium is included in the mix to add some synthetic flexibility. Out of these materials, a series of nine molecular tools that have been theorized to work in real world situations via computational methods could be constructed. These tools have high accuracy positional control by rigidity and lowering the temperature for activity.

Before we create these tools, and without the guidance of further computational and theoretical work, Merkle stated that we will wander in a nanotechnologic desert for a long time.

Zyvex was created in 1997 to develop molecular technology and has now spun off into four different companies: Zyvex: Instruments, Performance Materials, Labs, and Asia. Zyvex is the leader in nanotechnology market with years of experience providing tools, instrumentation and applications to serve the semiconductor and advanced research markets. They now have 32-nm test chips. According to Von Ehr the company has been able to save its customers millions of dollars.

Carbon nanotubes are about 20 times stronger in tensile strength than stainless steel, and are the best heat and electrical conductors. Structures like houses, rafts, lever arms, and other useful devices can be built up out of carbon nanotubes, but even a single tube can be used to manipulate single atoms. The company has also found a way to solubize a bundle of nanotubes and process it into usable forms.

Zyvex’s first customer was Eastern Sports. Using Zyvex technology, Eastern Sports was able to give baseball bats and hockey sticks a 10 to 15% performance increase. Zyvex has since created a network of customers that includes Boeing.

The benefits of nanomaterials include building conventional items with the reinforcing structures nanotubes provide. NanoSolve Technology is able to apply the science to make bikes, baseball bats, and golf club shafts and more with carbon nanotube composites. A small increment in manufacturing means that the company is able to charge a large percentage more to increase revenue.

Von Ehr said “Molecular nanotech is the precise controlled rearrangement of atoms into higher value products,” for instance, huge perfect diamonds which may be used in a variety of ways including computer processing. Zyvex wishes to be able to lead the commercialization of adaptable, affordable, atomically-precise manufacturing. This step forward in manufacturing would mean that even the factory that is creating these materials is made in the same way that the products are. This concept is considered by Von Ehr to be Eric Drexler’s major conceptual breakthrough: the machine that is manipulating these atoms is also made out of atoms. Therefore one of the products that these machines should be able to make is more machines to make more product. Making physical objects by placing nearly every atom where it has been designed to go could mark the end of the industrial revolution and the beginning of a new one. We will then be able to create low cost factories, highly differentiated but low cost products, and faster time to market products. The long term environmental impact of molecular manufacturing is green and clean. One goal of the technology is to remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere and actually use it to make products. The pollution of today may have economic value in the future.

Zyvex sees itself as the facilitator for creating everything that could possibly be made in the world, not by actually manufacturing the product itself, but rather by manufacturing the machines that make the product.

Seeman lamented that he is a working scientist, and therefore his work does not progress as fast as he would like it to. Some of the ideas he has had from the 1980’s still have not come to pass, but he is okay with that.

DNA is such great material that it has out-rivaled all the competition as the material used for genes. Reciprocal exchange, where DNA exchanges pieces of itself with another molecule in order to come up with a new strain takes place in the double helical context. Sequence symmetry is minimized through the use of branched junctions which can be used in 5, 6, 8, and 12 arm junctions. Twenty-seven years after the beginning of his work, Seeman is still working on a good crystal in order to use his theory regarding DNA crystallography. DNA comes with its own set of assembly instructions known as sticky end cohesion which utilizes hydrogen bonding. The structure of the molecule dictates where certain proteins are in the DNA. The central concept of structural DNA nanotechnology is combining branched DNA with sticky ends to make objects, lattices, and devices, using DNA as bricks and mortar or just as mortar. Seeman would like to be able to architecturally control scaffolding, as well as make nanotech devices. Currently crystallography is primarily guess work and is not as successful as it could be. If scientists could better organizing biological macromolecules they could create nano-electric components.

Why would we use DNA? The two key reasons are predictable molecular interactions and designing the shape by selecting a sequence. Seeman’s lab would like to control the structure of matter in 3D to the highest resolution possible so as to understand the ways that matter interacts with matter in the macro- and micro-scales

Xing Wang has come up with 8 and 12 arm junctions. These connected lattices may derive a variety of shapes. The requirements of lattice design components include:

• predictable interactions
• predicable local product structures
• structural integrity

Seeman has been able to create 2D, 2X arrays that look similar to rotini pasta. Robust arrays of DX triangles were devised by Boaquin Ding around 1996. When there are two of the arrays, they can be arranged to from large parallelograms and larger arrays in 2D. The lesson learned has been that DX cohesion is much more robust than a double sticky end. Many “wild” motifs can be configured this way in 2D.

Progress towards 3D arrays has advanced in the last few years. The best so far has been 3D trigonal DX lattices using X-ray diffraction in 10 angstrom resolution. The original tensegrity triangle shows an over-under motif, but the resolution is still along 10 angstroms although why this is the case is still unknown.

Chemistry can be diversified using nylon-DNA. The basic idea is using DNA to control molecular topography. The first base they made took about seven years to create and the second one took about four, so there is hope, Seeman said, that they may make the third one while he is still alive. The structure of the shortest piece of nylon is dictated by the DNA; two motifs can organize nanoparticles known as DNAzyme in 5 to 10 nm particles.

From genes to machines: using nano devices

A B-Z device has been configured using B and Z DNA, each of which is either left-handed or right-handed. However, the device does not take advantage of the strengths of DNA.

A sequence dependent device, on the other hand, does make use of the strengths of DNA when ordered in a particular sequence. This system is much more robust than the previously mentioned system. The device is connected to DNA trapezoid, and there is evidence for its viability by rearranging orientation.

Translation using nanomachinery in a ribosome like device

Translation introduced diversity into the RNA world, so DNA nanotech may make this a possibility in controlled conditions.

Conclusions

When in doubt, DNA is far more robust and better controlled than RNA. DNA, for many purposes, may also not be the best material to use, but it is great for prototyping these things to see if we can create these self assembly features anyway. DNA is still the easiest to use. It is easy to design and acquire, and the parameters are easier to maintain.

The following is paraphrased from Phoenix’s lecture “A History of Nanotechnology from 1959 to 2029″.

Some people like to trace the field of nanotechnology to 1959 to Richard Feynman and his classic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom“. At the time there had been plenty of work on colloid and electron microscopes. In the early 1980’s, Eric Drexler started publishing articles about how we could engineer at the nanoscale using proteins in a machine like manner.

This set the stage for Engines of Creation, Drexler’s popular book coining the phrase nanotech as well as introduced the concept of nanotechnology to the public. This book describes possibilities, and not the actual way that science could go about making it a reality; therefore, scientists decided that the book wasn’t worth anything and the ideas presented were not possible. A concept that still worries the lay population is the concept of ‘gray goo’, where nano-machines that are badly programmed run amock and destroy the biosphere, thereby destroying life as we know it. To this day there are proponents of the gray goo theory, especially in the anti-technology realms of criticism.

Early molecular manufacturing was based on the principles of biology: small manufacturing systems and organic-like chemistry that creates very high performance machines and high performance products.

Molecular Manufacturing’s Power: why we would like to pursue this line of thought.

• Scaling laws – smaller is better working
• Low friction and wear
• General purpose manufacturing
• Highly reliable operation
• High material strength
• Inexpensive material (carbon)

There were skeptics from the beginning; people assumed that only biological entities could replicate. Other questions were raised, such as how molecular manufacturing and resulting products would be powered and controlled, as well as questions of quantum uncertainties and the idea that chemistry was too unreliable to control properly.

The first thoughts on nanomachinery applications were related to medicine. Scientists saw value in the technology in terms of body repairs and parts manufacturing, recovery from cryonic freezing, cellular building, and genetic repair. Medical nanorobots could navigate in the body easily as long as they had a power source and did not overheat the body as they worked.

In the 1990’s nanotechnology concepts started to mature and take root in Drexler’s Nanosystems. The book described the physics of nanosystems such as scaling laws and atomic-scale physics (e.g. superlubricity, discrete dimensions, quantum phenomena). The word “nanotechnology” was used underground by college students and lab scientists.

In the year 2000, nanotechnology went mainstream with the advent of a national Nanotechnology Initiative in the United States, US$1 billion in funding for nanotech defined as anything interesting and small. The gray goo problem also came to mainstream attention with Bill Joy’s “Why the future doesn’t need us“.

Nanoscale Technologies:

• Build small objects and structures
• Use big machines
• Limited product range
• Diverse but limited applications
• Lots of cool physics tricks
• Not just one technology; not even just one family
• Materials, not products

From 2000 to 2007, nanoscale technology advanced in many directions. The not-for-profit organization CRN was founded in December 2002. Nanofactory architecture ventures were established all over the world including Zyvex, NanoRex, and Ideas Factory.

Phoenix wrote a 73 page paper called [PDF] “Design of a Primitive Nanofactory” in 2003. He postulated that once you have a machine that can take small molecules of carbon from other materials all you need is someone to engineer how to put them together. The factory design was rather large, though, and Burch and Drexler came up with a better architecture design in a short computer-animated film related in July 2005 and updated in 2006 called “Productive Nanosystems: From Molecules to Super Products“.

More recent technology advances include picking and placing a single silicon atom (Oyabu), [PDF] DNA staples (Rothmund), and many more.

Molecular manufacturing will continue to advance as designs get better and mainstream acceptance continues to grow. The future holds for us better computers; assemblers; implications in medicine; diamond fabrication by standing probe microscopes; manufacturing of other components such as alumina, sapphire, and silicon; brain machine interfaces; space flight; and planet-scale engineering.

The lecture presented today was called “Greening the Deserts of Earth”. The firm explores many biotechnology approaches to global concerns. They believe that there are many serious environmental concerns that will become more dire over the course of the century which include but are not limited to global warming and sea level rising. McCoy and his group believe these problems will be solvable by future technologies that will help make the world a better place for everyone.

McCoy said that based on scientific evidence, humans have in fact had an impact on warming of the earth and other environmental challenges that we will face in the near future, but he was not sure exactly what impact we have had. He discussed the projection of sea level rise in the next few years to 2100. There are many challenges that this will present, including environmental concerns, available water sources, corrosion, population, sustainable food production, energy, and deforestation. “Wars of the future will be fought over water,” and not over fuel sources, McCoy stated.

McCoy proposes an Integrated Seawater System (ISS) that requires seawater, desert coasts, and sunlight. Almost every country in the world can fit these requirements. ISS has three components itself: aquaculture, agriculture, and forestry/wetlands. The agriculture component specifically pertains to plants known as halophytes that like water of high salinity and can double as food and fuel sources while reducing the human carbon footprint. Mangroves in particular fit the bill for an alternative sustainable approach to agriculture. The integration of ISS into national infrastructure would make the “reliance on fresh water no longer the threat that it has always been. It gives the world a new agriculture, new food sources, and a new site specific wealth generation tool.”

This project has been tested in a 1000 hectare integrated seawater system in Massawa, Eritrea. This country is one of the poorest and youngest in Africa. In 2003 the project in Massawa was closed due to political instability, but the project continues to be tested for viability in Northern Sonora. Unfortunately, McCoy said, the places that are most in need of these new technologies are the ones that are most likely to abuse monetarily the outcomes.

Key benefits of ISS:

• Greening the deserts by transforming them into wetlands and forests.
• Reducing the impact of Global Warming in a relatively short time period
• Economic development

The firm produces SeaForest BioDiesel as well. The idea is to shift fuel production to a “more sustainable, renewable approach to avoid an increase in global food prices for individuals in poor developing nations.” The production of this fuel does not compete with food production (corn, soy) for water as they use only salt water.

Biotechnology Applications:

• Hybrid cultivators to drastically enhance product yields
• Molecular marker assisted selections
• Gene knock-down
• Gene transfer

Future Implications:

• Economic Development
• Energy Security
• BioTech and IP
• Environmental Impact
• Sustainable Business Models

Dehdashti said that advanced complex atherosclerotic coronary artery disease is a therapeutic challenge, poorly treated by angioplasty and bypass surgery. Many options have been used to treat this condition, but the major problems include rejection by the body and degenerative issues. Dehdashti outlined the many different therapies that have been in use or that are being tested right now, and the challenges that they pose to the affected person, taking special care to outline scar density due to various therapies.

Transmyocardial channeling, which is performed via catheter, may be readily performed and is apparently feasible according to research conducted by Dehdashti and his team. This entails drilling little holes within the heart muscle, and allowing the heart to sprout new blood vessels via angiogenesis around nano-tubes that are placed in strategic areas. Angiogenesis would be stimulated by the injection of various growth factors and polymers. With the advent of nanotech, the polymers used in this therapy may become readily available, therefore making this area of research viable in the real world. This model has in fact been performed in four human patients to date. The criteria for approving the patient required at least one included vessel and much chest pain. Dr. Dehdashti said “Mechanical TMC combined with a sixty day period of myocardial healing provides significant protection to the LV myocardium in the setting of acute ischemic challenge.”

In reference to her work in foreign countries Hopper said “It is not about the medicine that we are bringing people; it is about the education that we bring to these communities.” The World Care dream manifests itself in these words, as she has taken resources that she can procure from Tucson, Arizona (i.e. school supplies that university students donated to the cause, money, and manpower) and brings them to third world countries. “We have both problems here and abroad, it often is about distribution.” Distribution is essentially what she does. She takes the “waste” of our country and deposits them in places of need. Instead of giving just school supplies, she has created infrastructures for schools, libraries, and hospitals in these places of need using a five year plan. “There is a check and balance associated with what we are doing,” she said. “Are we helping people, or are we hurting them?” Hopper makes sure that the help that is provided to people in need is available and lasting, thus creating stability in these environments. She is part of the nuclear weapon disarmament program in North Korea, and thus she gives supplies to NK every time they disarm a potentially devastating weapon. She has been to Honduras, Indonesia during the tsunami, and other areas of need after major disasters.

The following question was posed: How did you get from World Care to nanotechnology?

Hopper said that the idea of nanotech appeals to her background in physics, but more importantly it is an idea that what we do has an effect on everyone. The prospect of cheap energy, molecular manufacturing, and space travel excites her very much. “Transportation of goods from one location to another takes a lot of resources and energy.” She said “How do we get high-level knowledge, development, and understanding to everyone? Nanotechnology has tremendous opportunity for the world, and especially the humanitarian world. With over one billion people in the world living in poverty, free energy, clean water, and housing are very important issues.” Hopper argued that the ramifications of the things we are doing today may be good at first, but alter environments and economies irreparable. She gave as an example of desalination of water; it is good to drink, but starts to kill the wild life around the area where salt is actually taken out of the water.

The potential destruction that nanotech poses is what Hopper is essentially worried about. There are many good things that will absolutely come out of these brand new technologies, but we need governance.

Image caption: Simone Syed (and Michael Anissimov of Accelerating Future) at the Nano/Bio 2007 conference.

My day:

I am very excited to be attending the Nano/Bio Conference 2007 put on by World Care and CRN (Center for Responsible Nanotechnology). I was allowed to come to this conference on scholarship after Lisa Hopper, the conferences organizer and visionary, found out that I was a student and an active member of h+, a transhumanist club at the University of Arizona. The conference is very small, she told me. A total of 37 people have signed up as of this morning. As I walk into the room, I am told that this is an interactive conference; a question and answer format will be prevalent throughout the four days of lectures and workshops, which excites me. I love interactive formats, and small and closed groups where I can meet and talk to people I may actually like to be friends with. I immediate sat down next to a boy about my age, and as he introduced himself to me, I realized that I know him online. He is an editorial assistant for Kurzweil Industries, which is pretty freaking cool. Michael Anissimov is my ‘friend’ on the transhumanist network and it turns out that he knows quite a bit about our h+ club! Michael explains that h+ is the most active student transhumanist club that he has come across. Go, us! I have also met another woman, by the name of Cairn Idun, whose husband has been cryonically suspended. At 8:30 Lisa Hopper opens with her presentation on the beginnings of World Care.