Nanomanufacturing Systems

Scientists are working around the clock on a working nanomanufacturing system.  Actually - our bodies are working examples of such a system - and scientists are trying to apply what we know and are learning about biological processes and apply them into the physical world.  The goal of a nanomanufacturing system is to produce a software-controlled system capable of initiating nanoscale reactions, which could then be used to build more sophisticated, faster, or special-purpose fabrication machinery.

There are several ways to go about such a sophisticated machinery - one of the most popular being the "top-down" approach".
Richard Feynman, who wrote "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" describes it here...

"...we build a machine shop and remotely-controlled manipulator arms (called waldoes after the Heinlein story) in whatever macro-scale technology we can, and then use it to rebuild itself iteratively, but on a smaller scale each time. The big difference between this and an approach based on scanning probes or micromachines is that those approaches start with getting small, and then attempt to build a manipulation capability at that scale. The top-down approach does the opposite: start with a full manipulation capability, and then get small without losing it. One of the advantages of this capability-first / size-second approach is that when scale-affected techniques do give out, you have a broadly capable system you can use to experiment with alternative techniques."

What would a nanomanufacturing system look like?  Have a look at the animated video below...

Well over a billion dollars a year is being poured into nanotechnology research in the US, and Germany, Japan, and China are also spending large amounts in nanotech research & development.  With all this money being spent on developing nanomanufacturing systems, what is a proper roadmap in which the world can follow?  Here is a proposal by J. Storrs Hall PhD.

"So how many steps would it take to get to atomic precision? The first thing to realize is that you have reached atomic precision not when your parts are the size of atoms, but when your tolerances are. A typical fine machining accuracy for most of the twentieth century was a ten-thousandth of an inch (2.5 microns); there are specialty shops that will do one micron. Atomic precision is about an angstrom (one tenth of a nanometer), so you need to improve by a factor of 10,000. If we can quarter the tolerance at each stage, as Feynman suggests, we are about 7 steps away.

If, on the other hand, you start with current fine machining with a micron tolerance, a fully robotic manufacturing system should fit on a desktop (with individual parts on the order of a centimeter). Next stage is a breadbox sized unit (tolerances 250 nm), then one the size of a grapefruit (64), then one as big as a golfball (16). The next system, the size of a pea, has 4 nanometer tolerances and should be able to manipulate the 10-nanometer blocks your chemist or biotech friends have been working on in the meantime."

• Nanomanufacturing Systems

• Atomically Precise Manufacturing

• Molecular Manufacturing