LONG AND MEDIUM TERM GOALS IN MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY

Ralph C. Merkle
Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA

Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on the arrangement of those atoms. Today's manufacturing methods arrange atoms statistically, without control over the placement of individual atoms. Casting, milling, lithography, and other traditional "bulk" manufacturing technologies provide only approximate control over the molecular structure of the material being manufactured. In the future, we will be able to manufacture structures in which each individual atom is in its proper place. This will be essential for the manufacture of molecular computers, and will also let us make diamondoid structures of remarkable strength and lightness.

Developing molecular manufacturing systems directly from our existing technologies might be difficult. Existing technologies, particularly self assembly and scanning probe microscopy, should provide developmental pathways towards intermediate objectives in the development of molecular nanotechnology. The self assembly of a Stewart platform (basically an octahedron with adjustable length struts) would give us a positional device with six degrees of freedom, but one that is much less complex than more traditional robotic arms. Such a self-assembled positional device would offer the advantages inherent in a device made with molecular precision, and would be more experimentally accessible than the stiffer and higher performance diamondoid equivalent.

Associated slides

Further information on molecular nanotechnology is available at http://nano.xerox.com/nano