Responsible Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology and Risk, Part 4

Continuing with CRN's series of five installments analyzing nanotechnology and risk...

Earlier this week, Part 1 gave an overview of existing nanoscale technologies, and Part 2 covered the risks of nanoscale technology. Part 3 (yesterday) described molecular manufacturing, while Part 4 (today) assesses the risks of molecular manufacturing. Part 5 will be a conclusion with recommendations.

Part 4: Risks of Molecular Manufacturing

Lack of knowledge is probably the major contributor to molecular manufacturing risk. The overly skeptical and politicized attitude toward molecular manufacturing in the U.S. during the past decade has created a situation in which almost no information is available; in fact, a very informative set of studies was removed from the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act at the last minute through the efforts of a special-interest group.

Due to the almost complete lack of studies, there are several major uncertainties about molecular manufacturing. When will it be developed? CRN believes it will likely be between five and twenty years from now, but other estimates vary widely. How hard will it be to develop? A recent study (PDF) funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts concluded that a self-replicating system might be substantially less complex than a Pentium IV chip. But the cost might be anywhere from $100 million to $10 billion -- though we can say with confidence that the cost will rapidly decrease. Who will develop it? The military in any of several nations might be motivated to develop it openly or secretly. Any of a number of companies might do a study to construct a roadmap and cost estimate, discover that development fits their budget and business plan, and launch a project.

Planning for molecular manufacturing also is lacking. It does not appear in any roadmaps or forecasts. Only a handful of organizations, including CRN and the Foresight Institute, have even begun asking questions about what would constitute appropriate policy for a radical increase in manufacturing capability, and no good answers are available yet. If it is developed in less than a decade, the most common response will probably be panic.

A self-contained general-purpose manufacturing technology would have significant military implications. So would sudden, multiple-order-of-magnitude improvements in computers, robotics, and avionics. If these are combined into a single breakthrough, nations without access to the technology would have reason to feel very threatened; preemptive strikes appear to be a possible response. Once the technology is developed and proliferated, arms races could evolve rapidly and lead to accidental or deliberate conflict. If the military aspects of molecular manufacturing become too significant, it may be restricted in a variety of ways, preventing most companies and potential customers from participating in its benefits. Threat or outbreak of war would create even more problems and uncertainties.

Civilian access to molecular manufacturing also raises several risk-related policy issues. It would not be difficult to construct weapons of mass destruction with the technology, once it has developed to the point of automated self-contained factories; this implies that it may be kept closely guarded. On the other hand, the potential benefits from extensive positive use argue strongly for the desirability and near-inevitability of widespread access.

The technology will rapidly become easier to develop; and as the saying goes, if it is outlawed, only outlaws will have it. A wide range of policy outcomes can be imagined, from near-complete lack of control (as we have today in computers, where anyone can write and distribute malicious programs), through regulation, to near-complete control even of enabling technologies -- which would require unprecedented levels of surveillance worldwide. Each of these scenarios comes with its own set of risks. Without some idea of which will be tried and which can be stable, detailed analysis would be premature. However, the probability of random policy hitting on a good solution appears to be low, so further study in this area is urgently needed.

In almost any circumstance, intellectual property will be a major commercial issue. Molecular manufacturing has the potential to replace or supplant most forms of manufacturing, as well as most extraction activity and several infrastructures. With a potential orders-of-magnitude gap between cost and value, the ability to extract licensing fees could be worth significant fractions of the gross world product. Conversely, there will be huge economic incentives to bypass such fees. The ongoing struggle between the entertainment industry and file-sharing activity is a mild preview.

Further complicating the issue will be humanitarian and environmental imperatives, as foreshadowed by the debate over affordable pharmaceuticals. There is little doubt that fully utilized molecular manufacturing could save tens of millions of lives per year, but it will be difficult to develop policy that can accomplish this while satisfying commercial imperatives. CRN has proposed that something like the current division between commercial and Open Source software be adopted, allowing lifesaving products to be designed and built without licensing fees by hobbyists and altruists while retaining the right to make money on branded and polished commercial products. However, this would be a very delicate balance, and a combination of legal and black-market backlash would punish failure.

It was once thought that molecular manufacturing systems would be uncomfortably close to biological systems, able to remain functional and find resources in the wild, building exponentially more copies of themselves until the biosphere was consumed. However, as understanding matured from concept to architecture in the early 1990's, it became clear that molecular manufacturing systems would not have nearly the required functionality to run wild, either during development or during use. It is also clear that there is no reason to build general-purpose manufacturing into products, and doing so would be quite inefficient.

This is equally true for weapons: a non-replicating weapon built by a separate and special-purpose factory would be more destructive than a weapon that had to lug around an entire manufacturing system. To design a small self-contained free-range self-replicator would be a very difficult and pointless task -- harder than designing a nanofactory. Since it does not appear impossible, and since hobbyists have designed pointless computer viruses, it cannot be ruled out in the long term. But we do not consider it a primary concern (PDF).

Nevertheless, public worries about gray goo may be a major factor in shaping molecular manufacturing policy. Mainstream fictional portrayals of gray goo-like developments, including Michael Crichton's Prey, will work to keep the idea current. The fact that it does not appear to be theoretically impossible will make it hard to completely calm fears that molecular manufacturing will lead to it. (At the same time, ongoing attempts to assert that all of molecular manufacturing is impossible will extend the current period of confusion about the technology and its implications.)

Confronted with these issues, it may be tempting for business or government interests to try to postpone or prevent the technology. However, this would probably increase the risks in the not-too-distant future. A growing body of research on enabling technologies, the rapid development of computers, and worldwide awareness of the possible benefits, will ensure development before long -- if not in the mainstream, then from an unpredictable source.

In summary, the largest uncertainties about molecular manufacturing today arise from a near-complete inability to make policy or even to understand policy tradeoffs. The largest risks come from the likely consequences of bad policy. War between the world powers, uncontrollable black markets, widespread economic upheaval, lethal levels of artificial scarcity, massively destructive individuals, and government oppression are all likely consequences of policy that is hasty, simplistic, heavy-handed, or inadequate.

The best way to mitigate these risks and consequences is to engage in rapid and comprehensive studies of molecular manufacturing. CRN has published a list of "Thirty Essential Studies", each with multiple sub-topics, which we assert is the minimum required to get a handle on the issues. We strongly encourage individual and cooperative efforts to investigate these and related questions.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 5: Conclusion and Recommendations.

Nanotechnology and Risk, Part 3

Continuing our series of five installments analyzing nanotechnology and risk, we turn now to molecular manufacturing.

Earlier this week, Part 1 gave an overview of existing nanoscale technologies, and Part 2 assessed the risks of nanoscale technology. Part 3 (today) is an overview of molecular manufacturing. Part 4 will address the risks of molecular manufacturing and Part 5 is a conclusion with recommendations.

Part 3: Molecular Manufacturing Overview

Molecular manufacturing is based on a simple idea: use programmable chemistry and assembly to create complex products with nanoscale features. This is a more precise way of manufacturing than today's methods, and should make products with far higher performance. Computers and motors could be a million times smaller, and materials could be 100 times stronger. Precision automated manufacturing using tiny machines would allow a complete, self-contained, general-purpose factory to sit on a desktop. And because smaller things work faster, the factory could fabricate its own mass (including a duplicate factory, if desired) in just a few hours.

The products of molecular manufacturing would be extremely inexpensive to make. Strong, chemically bonded components would be very reliable, especially since the chemical fabrication operations would be simple and repetitive. High reliability would allow complete automation, eliminating labor and maintenance cost. The R&D cost of the first factory could be spread over all the factories it could produce, and all the factories they could produce, and so on. The major remaining cost is raw materials and energy.

The material supply for a nanofactory would be simple chemicals. The energy required could be high, but still a good payoff considering the value of the product. As building materials, the products are expected to be competitive with steel given their greater strength, even at today's energy prices. As computers, medical devices, and aerospace hardware, their value would be orders of magnitude higher than their cost. To put it in perspective, a few milligrams of motors could power your car, a few milligrams of circuitry would be a world-class supercomputer, and a few milligrams of artificial red cells could keep a person alive for many minutes even with their heart stopped. But making kilogram-scale products should not be much more difficult than making milligram-scale products.

If a factory could build a duplicate in a few hours, then the number of available factories could grow exponentially, multiplying by 100 or 1000 each week. Production capacity will be essentially unlimited. An important product of the nanofactory would be solar cells. A lightweight design could collect enough energy to build another of the same size in a day or two. This implies that energy will not be a limiting factor in production capacity. And the main chemical element required would be carbon, which is plentifully available in many forms. Because a variety of physics factors work together to make molecular fabrication and nanoscale manipulation simpler than large-scale industrial robotics, the factories are expected to be completely automated; this implies that labor costs (and manufacturing jobs) will disappear.

The process of designing products could be greatly accelerated by the ability to build prototypes very quickly and cheaply. Also, the vastly higher performance of components implies that most human-scale products would be mostly empty space, reducing the effort required to balance engineering tradeoffs. All in all, the process of product design might resemble software engineering more than hardware engineering. A present-day illustration of the effects of rapid prototyping can be found in the electronics industry. Two kinds of chips, ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), have very similar functionality: they can be configured for a particular product to carry out a complex task. But ASICs take months to manufacture, while FPGAs take seconds to reprogram. As a result, ASICs may require an order of magnitude more design effort because the cost of mistakes is so much higher.

These considerations imply that the development of the first molecular manufacturing system will create a sudden and substantial technological advance in our ability to manufacture large, complex, nanostructured products. How rapidly this could be adopted in diverse applications remains a subject of debate. However, it seems clear that there is potential for abrupt transformation of several industries, infrastructures, and strategic military factors. The potential benefits include replacement of inefficient or ecologically harmful infrastructure, rapid medical advances, and inexpensive large-scale humanitarian projects. This suggests substantial opportunity for profit. However, molecular manufacturing also creates a variety of risks and disruptions that will require careful policymaking to avoid. These will be considered in our next installment.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 4: Risks of Molecular Manufacturing.

Nanotechnology and Risk, Part 2

Today, we continue our series of five weblog installments analyzing nanotechnology and risk, covering both existing and near-future nanoscale technologies as well as medium-future molecular manufacturing.

Part 1 gave an overview of existing nanoscale technologies. Part 2 (today) assesses the risks of nanoscale technology. Part 3 is an overview of molecular manufacturing, and Part 4 addresses the risks of molecular manufacturing. Part 5 will be a conclusion with recommendations.

Part 2: Risks of Nanoscale Technology

Aside from public perception, the main risks in nanoscale technology have to do with nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are very small (1-100 nm) forms of material. At this scale, only a few atoms wide, material properties often change. Unfortunately, some materials become more toxic at small sizes. Some become more mobile in the body or in the environment. Others, of course, become less toxic and less mobile, but the point is that the toxicology of nanoparticles is, so far, largely unpredictable. It should also be noted that nanoparticles come in many kinds. For example, some are thin membranes of self-assembled molecules, while others are small chunks of minerals -- as different from each other as a rock is from a soap bubble.

The existence of nanotechnology as a recognized field has drawn attention to these problems and properties of nanoscale particles. Increased scrutiny should be expected for any technology that makes or uses free nanoparticles. This may even include existing technologies (diesel exhaust, for example, is getting a closer look). Several organizations are starting to look at nanoparticle health issues, including the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University. The UK's Royal Society also recently issued a report on nanoscale technologies, largely focusing on nanoparticle risks.

Many nanotechnologies, of course, do not use free nanoparticles; instead, the nanometer features are bound to a surface or within a volume, or are created chemically. (A few things, including carbon nanotubes, blur the line between particles and chemicals.) But scrutiny, both rational and irrational, may spill over even to non-nanoparticle nanotechnologies.

Opportunistic lawsuits appear to be a risk worth worrying about. Nanotechnology is novel and not well understood by the public, some aspects of it are not easy to explain, and much press has stressed the weirdness of physics at the nanoscale. This may increase the difficulty of getting insurance, a topic that is already being discussed.

It should be noted that the risk level of a nanoscale technology is connected only weakly with its level of innovation. A technology that patterns a surface to achieve a new optical effect may be both very innovative and quite safe. By contrast, a technology that merely grinds a catalyst smaller to increase its activity will produce nanoparticles that may create both physical risks and risks from irrationality.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 3: Molecular Manufacturing Overview.

Nanotechnology and Risk, Part 1

Over the next several days, CRN will publish five weblog installments analyzing nanotechnology and risk, covering both existing and near-future nanoscale technologies as well as medium-future molecular manufacturing. We will compare and contrast the two fields that take the name "nanotechnology", and finish with our recommendations for managing the risks presented by nanotechnology.

Part 1 (today) is an overview of existing nanoscale technologies. Part 2 will assess the risks of nanoscale technology. Part 3 is an overview of molecular manufacturing, and Part 4 addresses the risks of molecular manufacturing. Part 5 will be a conclusion with recommendations.

Part 1: Nanoscale Technologies Overview

Nanoscale technologies include many diverse fields. This installment will give a flavor of what the technology is about and how it works. Nanoscale features are used in a variety of applications including computers, disinfectants, self-cleaning surfaces, stronger plastics, medicines, solar cells, biological research, and materials science. These applications depend on a surprising variety of physical principles and means of manufacture.

One way to make nanoscale particles is simply to vary existing manufacturing processes. Grinding bulk materials finer, or condensing gases more quickly, can create smaller particles. Nanoscale structures can also be made chemically. Chemists have learned to make large, precise, branching molecules called dendrimers. Some chemicals can self-assemble into larger patterns, sticking together as regions of the chemical attract each other in particular ways. Non-molecular particles can also stack up, forming quasicrystalline arrays. Then there are a variety of ways, collectively called lithography, to form nanoscale features on an existing surface.

New physical and chemical structures can display new features. For example, smaller particles of a catalyst can be more active, not just because of increased surface area, but because of increased strain between the atoms. Other particles may trap electrons in ways that make them glow in specific colors or make them useful for new computer circuit designs.

Sometimes, simply arranging nanoscale objects more precisely can be helpful. New techniques for making single layers of molecules can be used for better semiconductors, sensors, surface characteristics, structural properties, and displays.

Tools to deal with the nanoscale also are called nanotechnology, because they sense or manipulate on the nanometer scale. These tools may not actually incorporate many nanoscale components. For example, the only nanoscale part of a scanning tunneling microscope (other than in the computer chips) is the scanning probe tip. And that is sometimes made by the low-tech technique of cutting a wire with an ordinary pair of scissors.

Carbon nanotubes are a hot topic in nanotechnology. Conceptually, a carbon nanotube is formed by rolling a thin strip of graphite rolled into a tube and chemically stitching the edges together. Carbon nanotubes are extremely strong. Depending on how the graphite is twisted, they may be excellent conductors, semiconductors, or insulators. They are unusual in that they are single molecules, with precise chemical formulas, but may be thousands of nanometers long. Carbon nanotubes are being investigated for use in electronics as well as for reinforcing plastic and making it conductive.

Tiny particles of gold absorb certain colors of infrared light, heating up as they do. If attached to a chemical that seeks out cancer cells, the particles will cluster around even tiny tumors. Shining infrared light on the patient will then overheat and kill the tumors without damaging the rest of the body.

Nanoscale technology does not build complete products, only components. The wide diversity of applications means that substantial research is necessary to develop the new applications. But small size, new structures, and greater precision can improve performance in a variety of ways. Less material may be needed; stronger components can be made; new optical and electronic elements promise to shrink computers by a hundredfold; hybrids of molecules and nanoparticles can have significant medical uses including destroying tumors without harming surrounding tissue. This combination of improved performance and new applications makes nanoscale technologies well worth investigating, and a wide variety of large and small companies, as well as academic research institutions, already are doing so.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2: Risks of Nanoscale Technology.

On the Air in Australia

CRN Director of Research Chris Phoenix was interviewed for a science program about nanotechnology on Australia's ABC Radio National. The show, called "Nature's Toy Box", will be broadcast there on Sunday, November 14, starting at 9:10 am. It also will be repeated on Tuesday, November 16, at 7:00 pm.

Here's how they're describing the program on the network's website:

There's good news and bad news as Nanotechnology begins to change everything. It's converging with biology, IT, and the cognitive sciences; and will affect whole economies, the way we live, and medical care. It's already happening, and science is ahead of public understanding.

After the program airs "down under", you can listen to it on the Web from anywhere in the world via streaming audio.

History repeats at IBM?

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, Chairman, IBM, 1943

"[Future] invention, discovery is likely not to have the same value as the transistor had or the automobile had. The equivalent of those things will be invented or discovered, but by themselves, they are just not going to be able to generate real business value or wealth as these things did." --Nick Donofrio, Senior Vice President of Technology and Manufacturing, IBM, 2004

The Donofrio quote was taken from this BBC article. Donofrio says that even in the case of the automobile and transistor, the value came not from the thing itself, but from how it was used: its social and cultural impacts. And he goes on to argue that technologists will need to focus on service and value rather than inventing gee-whiz gizmos as in the dot-com era. His vision of future technology focuses on seamless human-computer interfaces such as networked jewelry.

He has a point: general-purpose communication enablers will be quite important. But he is missing at least three other general-purpose technologies.

Before I list these general-purpose technologies, I'll comment on why general-purpose is the key concept. Most techno-gizmos are of limited utility and applicability. They're built and used for a specific purpose, so their value is limited. But a general-purpose technology is one that can be used for a wide range of purposes. It's both adaptable--engineerable and flexible--and powerful, so that it can add value to a wide range of activities. Electricity is clearly a general-purpose technology. Transistors are general-purpose switches, and they enable cheap computers that are general-purpose information processors. Cars are general-purpose; they're used for transporting people and objects very rapidly almost anywhere, as well as being a lot of fun (except in rush hour).

So general-purpose communication aids will certainly transform society. But almost by definition, any general-purpose technology will transform society. What Donofrio seems to be implying is that we're not going to see general-purpose technologies like we used to. But it didn't take me long to think of three that we will be seeing in the next few decades.

Molecular manufacturing (you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?) will give us general-purpose control over nanoscale structure. That will allow us to build lots of new, powerful, commercially valuable devices. That will certainly be transformative--though whether in a good or a bad way remains to be seen.

But there are at least two other general-purpose technologies coming soon. One is control of intelligence. Zack Lynch has been writing about neurotechnologies as the next big breakthrough. I've written to him, "What about molecular manufacturing?" And he's responded, more or less, "Yeah, that'll be big, but neurotech will be *really* big." Well, he knows more about neurotech than I do, so my best guess is that they'll both be *really* big. Anyway, neurotech seems to be approaching a point where we'll be able to engineer our brains, choose our moods, increase our intelligence and skills and learning ability. And then there's AI, which despite having a degree in it I know very little about. But even partial and limited success at general-purpose problem solving would have quite an impact.

The other approaching breakthrough is engineered control of health. We're just barely starting to move medicine from alchemy (try things and see if they work) to engineering. We don't yet even understand which parts of the genome are important and what they do. But we're learning fast. As our tools and sensors shrink to the size of cells and molecules, and our computers improve to where they can encompass the genome and then the proteome, we will become able to develop treatments deliberately rather than haphazardly. We can expect a radical increase in health and lifespan.

The BBC article begins, "It is unlikely that future technological inventions are going to have the same kind of transformative impact that they did in the past." I don't know whether Donofrio would go that far; I suspect the BBC is trying to downplay the power of technology, as they have done with molecular manufacturing. All Donofrio said was that new technologies wouldn't generate "real business value or wealth." But given the ability of businesses to extract wealth from almost any new invention, I think he's wrong even about that.

Chris

Precautionary Principle and Nanotechnology

I've just finished attending (and speaking at) the International Congress of Nanotechnology in San Francisco. It was a well-organized, well-attended and interesting conference.

During the event, discussion of the Precautionary Principle occurred many times. Sometimes it was disparaged by researchers as a potential threat to their ongoing work, and sometimes it was brought up by others as an important safeguard.

Often such people seem to be talking past each other, because they each focus on different versions of the Precautionary Principle, even if they don't realize it. CRN has published a short paper analyzing both versions of the Principle and applying them to advanced nanotechnology. We encourage study of our paper and others to help improve communication between stakeholders with apparently divergent interests.

Mike Treder

Step by step...

Check out this news item:

Researchers at the Aono Atomcraft Project in Japan, using an STM, are now able to extract a single silicon atom from the surface of a silicon crystal and rebond it to the surface at a different location. Atoms translocated in this manner can be re-removed without disarranging the underlying atomic layers. Atoms brought from afar can be used to repair holes in the silicon surface, or they can be used to build structures on top of the surface. [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 12(4): 2429-2433, Jul/Aug94] Folks, this looks an awful lot like real nanotechnology.

Pretty exciting stuff!

But if you look closely at the citation, you'll see that it happened a decade ago. So what happened since? Why didn't this lead straight to "real nanotechnology"?

The tool they were using, the STM (scanning tunneling microscope), has a limitation: it can only detect objects that it can send electrons through. And pure silicon crystal is an insulator. Add a few impurities, and it conducts; so they presumably were working on the surface of a "doped" crystal, and were able to make 2D patterns. But I guess they couldn't figure out how to make small conductive 3D silicon structures. Or, maybe, the project's funding ran out before they were able to: it was only funded through 1994.

Any lessons for today? Yes, though they're tentative. One lesson is that a single technique, no matter how impressive, probably won't be enough to get us to the ultimate goal: digitally-controlled nano-building-nano.

Another lesson is that a decade ago, people were already able to do covalent single-atom chemistry with atomic precision. They even had the process automated; their web site shows patterns consisting of many (dozens? hundreds?) displaced atoms. Take a simple system--the surface of a silicon crystal--and you can make intricate patterns with atomic precision by doing simple things to it repeatedly. I found that blurb in a google search, and reading it out of context, I first assumed that it must have been done within the last year. But no, they did it with decade-old computers, tools, and theory.

Now let's go back to that tool limitation. An STM probably can't build 3D silicon shapes. But there's a related tool called an AFM (atomic force microscope) that measures force rather than conductivity. It can "see" silicon just fine. And last year, a silicon atom was removed from a surface and then replaced using an AFM.

Can nanomachine-building nanomachines be made out of silicon? It seems pretty likely. Micron-scale AFMs have already been built using MEMS processes. So does this represent a path to molecular manufacturing, and if so, how close are they? We can't know, because no one in the U.S. has bothered to develop the theory of "stiff nanomachines" in enough detail to compare the possibilities with the experiments.

Chris

Molecular Manufacturing vs. Peak Oil

Civilization could be facing a big problem in the next few years. Oil could get considerably more expensive soon.

"Peak Oil" is not when we "run out" of oil; it's simply when our collective ability to extract enough oil is exceeded by our demand for oil. There's disagreement about when it will happen; pessimistic estimates say it could be in the next few years, while official estimates put it a couple decades out. Some people, including Alan Greenspan, say it won't happen at all: that new technology will create new supply from non-oil hydrocarbon reserves like tar sands and oil shale.

In evaluating these opinions, it's worth considering that global demand was within 1% of supply a couple of months ago. Demand keeps growing, while the oil production rates of most countries are already maxed out. This doesn't look like a very good safety margin. Another clue: In 1998, a report by the International Energy Agency listed "unidentified unconventional" oil as supplying 17% of the world's needs in 2020. In other words, they didn't know where it would come from.

For an overview of the Peak Oil argument, see Jack Zagar's presentation, especially charts 10 (vs. 9), 14 and 15, and 23. (It looks to me like Zagar is a bit pessimistic, as (if I read him right) he backdates advances in extraction by assigning the total oil in a field to the discovery date. But it looks like he's right that the standard discovery curve is far too optimistic.)

If oil supply ever does fall below demand, we can expect prices to rise steeply. At this point, it could take years for alternative technologies to come online, no matter how much economic incentive there is--and meanwhile, since oil demand is relatively "inelastic," the price of oil will be bid up until it slows the global economy enough to reduce demand. That's an ugly picture.

So how does this relate to molecular manufacturing? Well, to avoid a "Peak experience," some new technology will have to come online and grow quite rapidly. It will have to support rapid research and development (meaning, rapid prototyping of industrial-scale projects). Then it will have to support rapid trillion-dollar-scale building of infrastructure.

How rapid is "rapid"? It depends on how far in advance people are willing to admit they need a new technology. It's worth noting that after journalists noticed the 1998 "coded message" of scarcity the IEA reports transferred the "unidentified unconventional" oil to other categories. And in 2000 the USGS published a report (see "Chart 31" of Zagar's presentation) which appears to grossly overestimate the yet-to-find oil; the "Mean" curve is a sharp departure from history.

If corporate and national politics delay admissions of trouble until the signs are unmistakable, or if the Peak Oil camp is even close to right about a peak as early as 2008, then we could have just a few years in which to design and ramp up a new trillion-dollar infrastructure. The only way to do this without severe economic pain is large-scale, general-purpose, exponential manufacturing. And the only technology that appears to fit the bill is molecular manufacturing of the mechanosynthetic variety.

This appears to be a fairly strong argument for early development of advanced molecular manufacturing.

Chris

Mechanical Engineering and Nanotechnology

NOTE: Before posting a comment asking us to "send information" about mechanical engineering, CLICK HERE.

The September 2004 nanotechnology special issue of Mechanical Engineering focuses on near-term nanoscale technology research, but seems comfortable with molecular manufacturing as well. Perhaps as a result, their advice about the role of mechanical engineering in nanoscale technology is also good preparation for developing integrated, multiscale nanofactories and their products.

The issue's editor, in a piece titled "Far Out, or Well Grounded?" writes that he's "obsessed with the idea of infinitesimal robots building objects from molecule-size parts." He reflects, "But is that really feasible? No one can honestly say." But he points out that "Work in the nanoscale is grounded in the real world and real problems" and concludes, "Who better to make the nanorobots of my dreams than the folks who already make industrial machines in the here and now?"

The second item of the "Nano Bits" compilation is introduced thus: "The holy grail of nanotechnology is the atomic-scale factory. Computer-controlled nanorobots would assemble molecule-size parts to make all manner of miniature products. A sugar cube-size manufacturing plant is not close to being built, but scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have demonstrated one piece of a futuristic factory." The topic is a technique for moving single atoms of metal from one cluster to another along a carbon nanotube.

The advice on connecting mechanical engineering to nanotechnology is found in "Engineering Without Limit".

"One of the most important issues related to nanotechnology is systems integration and packaging. ....how do we integrate these building blocks in a rational manner to make a functional device or a system? This step requires design based on the understanding of nanoscale science, and on new manufacturing techniques. .... Assembling large quantities of nanostructures in a rational and rapid manner requires tooling, imaging systems, instrumentation, sensors, and control systems. After nanostructures are assembled into functional devices, they need to be packaged so that they can interact with their environment and yet retain the nanoness that provides the unique function and performance. These concerns are similar to those found in conventional manufacturing, though there is a call for a level of precision that is not required by macroscale designers." (Emphasis added.)

I'd like to add a useful comment here, but that quote says it better than I could.

I found this paragraph particularly interesting: "[I]t is often difficult to isolate nanoscale phenomena as we do at customary scales. That is, thermal, electronic, mechanical, and chemical effects are often related to each other. By changing one, it is possible to influence the others. This, of course, emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary knowledge."

Thermal and mechanical effects, and conventional electronics and chemistry, are of course statistical. So one implication of this quote is that statistics will have to be replaced with an understanding of the individual behavior of individual components. A deeper implication is that the physics you learned in high school is not the right set of rules for the nanoscale. But that "physics" was essentially just a set of engineering rules. New engineering rules will have to be developed, perhaps forming new disciplines like chemoelectrics and thermomechanics. But there will be rules. And like all engineering rules, most of them will be irrelevant in many if not most cases.

Thermoelectrics, by the way, is already an engineering concept. The article says that mechanical engineers understand the transport of heat and charge better than other technologists, so "will almost certainly devise the solution" to thermoelectric solar cells.

Structures with mechanical motifs may be useful in medicine: "Nanoparticles and nanowires exist on a scale similar to biomolecules such as DNA and proteins. This suggests that the biological sciences can provide crucial insights to the behavior of such material and that nanoscale devices may be used for medical applications."

A bold and very important statement: "Mechanical engineering programs need to ensure that their students are given a solid grounding in the fundamentals of physics, chemistry, and biology." This goes beyond giving lip service to interdisciplinary approaches; the statement was not qualified, and appears to say that all mechanical engineers should be thus trained. It goes on to say that students must be trained to develop new intuitions, and that "Topics such as solid state physics, chemical thermodynamics, surface forces at the atomic and molecular scale, nanofluidics, and motion and behavior of nanoscale structures—most of which receive little if any attention in the traditional undergraduate ME curriculum—will need to be integrated into core courses such as thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluids, statics and dynamics, and manufacturing."

A well-trained software engineer will be prepared to deal with alien rule systems. The good ones can learn the structure of a new programming language in an hour, the rules in a weekend, and become reasonably fluent and even creative within a week or two. This kind of skill is part of why I have been thinking that engineering skill in limited highly-controlled nanoscale domains could develop quickly. As long as what happens is visible and repeatable, it's quite possible to learn whole landscapes of interactions between very intricate and complex system components, developing and redeveloping hypotheses and techniques on a minute-to-minute basis.

The level of training described here approaches the problem from the opposite direction. The author expects that students will be able to learn enough from theory to become proficient at nanoscale exploration and design--not just able to plug numbers into formulas, but able to intuit how things work. Once this curriculum is designed and students start graduating from it, we can expect to see predesign of nanoscale machines be both more accepted and more useful. This will accelerate the development of advanced nanomachinery.

The article notes that this is a significant advance from what's currently taught: "Requiring professors of mechanical engineering to take graduate-level refresher courses on these topics is not inconceivable." By contrast, many current "courses of study reflect the technological needs of the Sputnik era or perhaps an earlier time." I'll note that the mindsets of many current technologists--including nanotechnologists--also reflect this.

The article ends on a note that's encouraging to me: "What's more, there should be a strong ethical component to this new teaching paradigm." Both unintended consequences and intentional misuse are invoked.

"There are many questions that we engineers must openly discuss: How could nanostructures or manufacturing of nanostructures be harmful to human health? Are there any environmental effects? Could nanotechnology reveal information that infringes on privacy? If improved health diagnostics and therapeutics facilitated by nanotechnology increase lifespan, what effect would the result have on demographics and productivity? Would this technology be accessible to the whole population, or be available to only a certain segment of our society?"

This list is inevitably incomplete. I would add: "How rapidly can new weapons and countermeasures be designed? Which will be more powerful, offense or defense?" This is not to impose responsibility for all military uses on the technologists; my concern is more practical: no one except the technologists can supply this information. And without this information, a sudden increase in our ability to design weapons could take political planners by surprise, leading to geopolitical instability.

Molecular manufacturing implies cheap exponential manufacturing. (Astonishingly cheap per feature; depending on the chemistry, ultimately even cheap per pound.) This implies economic shakeups--first to industries, ultimately to infrastructures and entire economies. Again, the technologists will have to think about these possibilities so they can tell the economists what to expect.

Usually, when nanoscale technology and molecular manufacturing appear onstage together, I worry about confusion and miscommunication. This publication is different. Perhaps because it accepts molecular manufacturing as a straightforward potential consequence of nanotechnology, it has given advice that is equally relevant to both branches. I hope we see a lot more of this in the future.

Chris

UPDATE: See our entry on "Mechanical Engineering & CRN".