X-Message-Number: 20966
From: 
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 17:23:57 EST
Subject: a small nano step for me...

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I think nano technology must look at far simpler objects that what is found 
in the literature on the subject. It is true that a number of parts have been 
produced, many come from the biochemical domain. Self assembly seems to work 
with great difficulties up to half a dozen parts or so. Making a useful 
device with some hundreds elements can't be done that way. Promized nano 
assemblers are no more substantial that religious faith, so something must be 
done in that domain.

I suggest to use the old printed circuit technology. There are components on 
a side and a printed board with holes on the other side. Components are 
plugged into place on the board before soldering.

For nanosystems, the board could be made from alumino-silicate sheet crystals 
some micrometers in diameter. A defect free crystal would be flat, such a 
crystal would be the starting point.

Using an atomic force microscope, some atoms could be deposited on the 
surface, a laser pulse would then "cook" the area so that the atom would 
enter the crystal latice. If that atom is bigger or smaller that the normal 
one in the crystal it will distort the structure and bend the surface. A 
relief could be built that way. A canion could be the place for a carbon 
nanotube conductor, a protein fixed to a gold ball could be fixed by a ball 
socket and so on. If each component has a definite size/shape, it could be 
put in a liquid solution with all others and the board. Simple brownian 
displacement would then assemble the complete system.

Making the printed board with an atomic force microscope need no 
technological progress, the tools are on the market today. The only 
requirement is a lot of patience.

Flat alumino-silicate crystals are known in bulk form as clay. In a saturated 
solution, they catalyse the formation of identical crystals above their 
surface. Clay is maide of dish-like columns of such crystals. When impurities 
produce a corugated surface, this one is reproduced sheet after sheet. It may 
take some months to build the first clay printed circuit, but after that it 
will reproduce in the right medium as bacteria in a fermenter.

I give that idea here because I think it is the most doable in the short term 
and as a way to block potential patents on it.

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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