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Nanotechnology, replication, and low cost manufacturingRalph C. Merkle, Ph.D.

Principal Fellow

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Health, wealth and atoms

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Arranging atoms

• Diversity• Precision• Cost

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Richard Feynman,1959

There’s plenty of roomat the bottom

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1980’s, 1990’s

Binnig and Rohrer

Experiment and theory

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President Clinton, 2000

“Imagine the possibilities: materials with ten times the strength of steel and only a small fraction of the weight -- shrinking all the information housed at the Library of Congress into a device the size of a sugar cube -- detecting cancerous tumors when they are only a few cells in size.”

The National Nanotechnology Initiative

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Positional assembly

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Experimental

100 microns

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H. J. Lee and W. Ho, SCIENCE 286, p. 1719, NOVEMBER 1999

Experimental

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Theoretical

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Self replication

A redwood tree(sequoia sempervirens)112 meters tallRedwood National Park

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Complexity (bits)

• Von Neumann's constructor 500,000

• Mycoplasma genitalia 1,160,140

• Drexler's assembler 100,000,000

• Human 6,400,000,000

• NASA over 100,000,000,000

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The Von Neumann architecture

UniversalComputer

UniversalConstructor

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/vonNeumann.html

Self replication

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Replicating bacterium

DNA

DNA Polymerase

Self replication

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http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/chapt_6.html

Drexler’s proposal for an assembler

Self replication

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http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRep.html

Macroscopiccomputer

Molecularconstructor

Molecularconstructor

Molecularconstructor

Broadcast architecture

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Advantages of broadcast architecture

• Smaller and simpler: no instruction storage, simplified instruction decode

• Easily redirected to manufacture valuable products

• Inherently safe

Broadcast replication

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Exponential assembly

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• Potatoes, lumber, wheat and other agricultural products have costs of roughly a dollar per pound.

• Molecular manufacturing will eventually make almost any product for a dollar per pound or less, independent of complexity. (Design costs, licensing costs, etc. not included)

Replication

The goal: low manufacturing costs

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An overview of replicating systemsfor manufacturing

• Advanced Automation for Space Missions, edited by Robert Freitas and William Gilbreath NASA Conference Publication 2255, 1982

• A web page with an overview of replication: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRep.html

Replication

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• be like living systems• be adaptable (survive in natural environment) • be very complex• have on-board instructions• be self sufficient (uses only very simple parts)

Popular misconceptions:replicating systems must

Replication

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Feynman, 1959

“The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed -- a development which I think cannot be avoided.”

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The impactof a new manufacturing technologydepends on what you make

Impact

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• We’ll have more computing power in the volume of a sugar cube than the sum total of all the computer power that exists in the world today

• More than 1021 bits in the same volume• Almost a billion Pentiums in parallel

Powerful Computers

Impact

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• New, inexpensive materials with a strength-to-weight ratio over 50 times that of steel

• Critical for aerospace: airplanes, rockets, satellites…

• Useful in cars, trucks, ships, ...

Lighter, stronger,smarter, less expensive

Impact

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• Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level

• Today’s surgical tools are huge and imprecise in comparison

Impact

Nanomedicine

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• In the future, we will have fleets of surgical tools that are molecular both in size and precision.

• We will also have computers much smaller than a single cell to guide those tools.

Impact

Nanomedicine

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Mitochondrion~1-2 by 0.1-0.5 microns

Size of a robotic arm~100 nanometers

Impact

8-bit computer

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“Typical” cell: ~20 microns

MitochondrionSize of a robotic

arm ~100 nanometers

Impact

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Respirocytes

http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes.html

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Human impacton the environment

• Population• Living standards• Technology

The environment

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• Greenhouse agriculture/hydroponics• Solar power• Pollution free manufacturing

The environment

Reducing human impacton the environment

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• The scientifically correct answer is I don’t know

• Trends in computer hardware suggest early in this century — perhaps in the 2010 to 2020 time frame

• Of course, how long it takes depends on what we do

How long?