The Nano Domain
Korean researchers aim to break the 10 nanometer barrier for circuit design, using carbon nanotubes to etch the circuits.
Leading the project are Prof. Choi Hee-cheul of Pohang University of Science and Technology and Kim Hyun-tak of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).Source
Choi employed carbon nanotubes to successfully etch circuits that are thinner than 10 nanometers on the face of silicon wafers. One nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter.
``As far as we know, we broke a 10-nanometer barrier for the first time in history. We could make the breakthrough after finding unique surface chemical reactions of carbon nanotubes,'' Choi said.
``We hope this carbon nanotube-based technology will help crank out 10-nanometer memory chips. Toward that end, we are currently cooperating with U.S. venture start-ups,'' he said.
The findings were featured in Nature Nanotechnology this week.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine are designing nanoscale protein traps for catching and disabling deadly viruses in the body--such as HIV.
The next stage of their research would be to mix engineered red blood cells and normal immune cells in a dish and see whether they can trap HIV. Dr. Turner speculated that someday it might be possible to give HIV patients transfusions of engineered blood cells. The cells would lure the virus away from T cells, allowing a patient’s immune system to recover. And since red blood cells survive only a few months before being destroyed in the spleen, the trapped viruses would gradually disappear from the patient’s body.Source
....even if the virus was not completely destroyed in a patient, driving down the numbers would have significant benefits. It would keep the immune system from collapsing, which is what AIDS drugs are designed to do now. But traps might end up being cheaper.
Dr. Finberg is also exploring other ways to trap viruses. “We did it with red blood cells, but they didn’t have to be red blood cells,” he said. “Another way to do it would be to pull them out with beads.”
Scientists at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bayreuth in Germany, are designing 14 nanometer sized grains of boron-nitride that are 85% as hard as diamond. These nanograins, when mass-produced, should provide an economical material for industrial cutting, drilling, grinding, and other applications. When molecular assembly comes into its own, this material may provide a useful substitute for diamondoid nano-assemblies for some uses.
Drexlerian molecular assemblers are probably decades away. Nanotechnology engineers and scientists have still not learned enough from biological molecular assembly, to understand enough of the potentials and limitations of molecular fabrication. Between where we are, and the time of abundant Drexlerian nano-assemblers, will be a time of exciting discovery. We do need to grow out of our narcissism, psychological neoteny, superstitious natures, and hyper-emotionalism, before we will be ready for the granting of our every wish.
Labels: materials science, memory technology, Nanotechnology
posted by al fin at 3:00 pm
2 Comments:
"We do need to grow out of our narcissism, psychological neoteny, superstitious natures, and hyper-emotionalism, before we will be ready for the granting of our every wish."
Ending the sentence with this makes it seem like your "decades away" prediction is based on how you DON'T WANT humanity to get MNT by a certain timeframe. And secondly, humanity will never, ever grow out of all the qualities you state, because they're encoded in our genome. (Posthumanity could though, but that's not humanity.) The only way out of them would be extensive neuroengineering of some sort, which is more difficult than MNT. Therefore, MNT will come before we get over these hangups, not after. That is why deploying the correct regulatory infrastructure beforehand is super-important.
I would appreciate a post going into a little more detail on why you think Drexlerian assemblers are decades away. How detailed is your model of the minimum design requirements of an assembler? Or are you making your prediction based on the enormity of the consequences? ("Tech X causes enormous consequences, therefore we should expect it to be further away than technology Y which causes more modest consequences.") Let us know.
Michael, I admire nano-optimists such as yourself and Brian Wang. If the breakthroughs are going to happen at all, optimistic theorists and enablers are necessary.
It is not the consequences of molecular assembly that cause me to place them at least 15 or 20 years in the future. The consequences of nuclear weapons are enormous, and potentially even more enormous, but that did not prevent such technology from becoming widespread.
My major scientific training is in biology and medicine. The DNA-to-RNA-to-enzyme-to----end product assembly line in human cells, with all the feedback and interaction involved, took billions of years to evolve in human form.
Just as most neuroscientists do not believe that outsiders such as Jeff Hawkins and Marvin Minsky are at all close to understanding the complexity of mind creation, so most biologists do not believe that nanotechnologists are anywhere close to understanding the complexity of general purpose programmable molecular-assemblers.
It is the complexity, not the consequences, that causes people with biological backgrounds to be skeptical of the "near-term" predictions.
There are many problems that need to be solved, not least of which are the control of energy and information flow in a system containing millions, billions, or more molecular assemblers working in concert.
I would never say that major breakthroughs in molecular assembly are impossible in less than ten years. I simply do not count on them, or expect them that soon.
Post a Comment
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
<< Home