Responsible Nanotechnology

Super-Weapons and Global Administration

CRN has come under fire for saying that some kind of global administration will probably be needed to reduce the dangers of molecular manufacturing.

First, there's a huge difference between global administration and world govermnent. The International Atomic Energy Agency is a global administration.

Second, consider this interesting quote, from the 1960's Eighteen-Nation Conference on Disarmament, as stated in "Psychological factors in Soviet disarmament negotiation", Conflict Resolution IX:1. The Soviet representative, Mr. Zorin, cited the New York World Telegram in accusing the U.S. of demanding of all countries "...the establishment of international institutions which would encourage countries to give up the greater part of their national sovereignty: the undoubted and unconditional recognition of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice; the acceptance of supranational inspection and verification; willingness to make national security dependent on an international peace force under a greatly changed and strengthened United Nations." International courts, cross-border inspections, and strong UN... funny how those are exactly the things the US is currently opposed to. That implies the opposition may be more for convenience or short-term advantage than a matter of principle.

Finally, a quote from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, written in response to the development of H-bombs: "Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty."

So if you want to argue that extremely powerful weapons are compatible with "business as usual," feel free to argue against Einstein. By the way, Joseph Rotblat, the last surviving signatory of that manifesto, says "It has great relevance today" and worries that atom bombs are becoming "a weapon of first resort" once again.

-- Chris and Mike

"N" is for Nanotechnology

- "Nanotechnology suggests the possibility of making extremely small, submicroscopic devices and machines."
- "Nanotechnology will end up making breakthroughs in ways that we cannot yet anticipate."
- "Nanotechnology is powerful, and we have to ensure that we harness its power towards useful ends."
- "The ability to build something from the most fundamental constituents is a massive breakthrough—it's going to change everything."

These are all quotes from scientists, ethicists, and observers interviewed for a new 30-minute documentary, "N" is for Nanotechnology.

Our colleague Rocky Rawstern, editor of Nanotechnology Now, NanoNews-Now, and NanoNews-Digest, has seen the video and posted a review. It appears that the documentary, which was produced in Canada, covers the basics fairly well. There are a few points with which we might disagree, but overall, this looks like a helpful tool for educating the general public.

Mike Treder

Flying Cars

Along the lines of future design possibilities, as mentioned here a few days ago, take a look at this "Personal Mobility Unit" of tomorrow.

Toyota says their "i-unit" is intended to "attain a greater balance of meeting individuals' wishes to enjoy freedom of movement, harmony with society, and harmony with the Earth’s natural environment." Sounds good, even if it doesn't fly.

Of course, this is just one idea, and robust molecular manufacturing will make even more radical designs a practical possibility. People sometimes ask: If this is the Future, where's my flying car? Flying cars may or may not prove to be a sound idea, but other changes coming in the next decade or two are likely to be far more startling and transformative than we have yet imagined.

Mike Treder

Guns or Butter?

In governance and politics, the familiar dilemma between spending more on defense or more on domestic programs is often referred to as "guns or butter".

I'm reminded of this expression in reading New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's call for "a crash science initiative for alternative energy and conservation to make America energy-independent in 10 years."

Friedman lambastes the US Congress for reducing funding to the National Science Foundation at a time when "the cold war generation of American scientists is not being fully replenished." He says:

America is facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. . . If we Americans don't do something soon and dramatic to reverse this "erosion", Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me, we are not going to have the scientific foundation to sustain our high standard of living in 15 or 20 years.

This echoes CRN's concerns about the looming Peak Oil crisis, which we assert is a strong reason to quickly develop exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing.

That's the butter: energy independence. But what about the guns?

Nothing comes without a cost. The same technology powerful enough to provide cheap energy -- along with medical miracles, easy access to space, and other benefits -- also will be powerful enough to create nearly unlimited numbers of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons will be more dangerous than anything we have today, and, unless something is done, they also will be much more accessible to people with bad intentions.

CRN is not alone in these concerns. We were pleased to read a recent commentary from Doug Parr, the Chief Scientist at Greenpeace, in which he warns about a nano arms race:

For Greenpeace, nanotechnology has the potential to generate cheaper renewable energy, stronger, lighter materials and other environmental benefits. But it could also lead to new, insidious forms of pollution, greater use of fossil fuels and a new nanotechnology military arms race. The debate is about how this technology is applied, and for whose benefits, and with what risks.

So, guns or butter? Energy or WMDs? Nanotechnology can provide both. Which comes first is up to us.

Mike Treder

X Prize Proposals

The people who inspired SpaceShipOne are at it again, and this time they're interested in molecular manufacturing (among other things).

CRN is planning to submit a prize proposal to encourage the development of a primitive molecular manufacturing capability. We believe this is the responsible thing to do. The machine we describe would not be capable of making weapons or other disruptive products. What it would do is serve as a proof of principle and stimulate discussion.

Chris has created a Wise-Nano page containing his proposal. The page also contains another X-prize proposal by Robert Freitas (author of Nanomedicine) that's intended to jump-start diamondoid molecular manufacturing more directly.

Is it wise to try to jump-start diamondoid MM at this point? There's no easy answer to that question; there are strong arguments on both sides. In the "Bootstrap Project" category on Wise-Nano is a page called "Tradeoffs of Pathways" that Chris created to provide a forum for discussion.

Chris and Rob haven't submitted their proposals yet, so there's still time for you to go to Wise-Nano and suggest improvements. Remember, you don't even need an account, but if you get one, you can be emailed whenever a "watched" page is changed.

Please discuss the prize and its implications on Wise-Nano, not here on the blog. If you have trouble using Wise-Nano, report it here.

Massive Change

An attractive and interesting website called Massive Change catalogs the "future of global design." They say:

Design has emerged as one of the world's most powerful forces. It has placed us at the beginning of a new, unprecedented period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected.

In order to understand these emerging forces, there is an urgent need to articulate precisely what we are doing to ourselves and to our world. This is the ambition of Massive Change.

We applaud this approach, and particularly appreciate their page on Manufacturing, where they write:

Powerful new tools for virtual simulation link the entire manufacturing process in a continuous flow – from design to prototyping, to fabrication, and even to disassembly. The capacity in one field is immediately applied to another.

The site does not yet directly address molecular manufacturing, but I have contacted them to see what new information CRN can provide to augment their efforts.

Mike Treder

Planar Assembly

The following entry is adapted from a paper I wrote recently for my NIAC grant, explaining why planar assembly, a new way to build large products from nano-sized building blocks, is better and simpler than convergent assembly. -- Chris Phoenix

History

Molecular manufacturing promises to build large quantities of nano-structured material, quickly and cheaply. However, achieving this requires very small machines, which implies that the parts produced will also be small. Combining sub-micron parts into kilogram-scale machines will not be trivial.

In Engines of Creation (1986), Drexler suggested that large products could be built by self-contained micron-scale "assembler" units that would combine into a scaffold, take raw materials and fuel from a special fluid, build the product around themselves, and then exit the product, presumably filling in the holes as they left. This would require a lot of functionality to be designed into each assembler, and a lot of software to be written.

In Nanosystems (1992), Drexler developed a simpler idea: convergent assembly. Molecular parts would be fabricated by mechanosynthesis, then placed on assembly lines, where they would be combined into small assemblages. Each assemblage would move to a larger line, where it would be combined with others to make still larger concretions, and so on until a kilogram-scale product was built. This would probably be a lot simpler than the self-powered scaffolding of Engines, but implementing automated assembly at many different scales for many different assemblages would still be difficult.

In 1997, Ralph Merkle published a paper, "Convergent Assembly", suggesting that the parts to be assembled could have a simple, perhaps even cubical shape. This would make the assembly automation significantly less complex. In 2003, I published a very long paper analyzing many operational and architectural details of a kilogram-per-hour nanofactory. However, despite 80 pages of detail, my factory was limited to joining cubes to make larger cubes. This imposed severe limits on the products it could produce.

In 2004, a collaboration between Drexler and former engineer John Burch resulted in the resurrection of an idea that was touched on in Nanosystems: instead of joining small parts to make bigger parts through several levels, add small parts directly to a surface of the full-sized product, extruding the product [38 MB movie] from the assembly plane. It turns out that this does not take as long as you'd expect; in fact, the speed of deposition (about a meter per hour) should not depend on the size of the parts, even for parts as small as a micron in size.

Problems with Earlier Methods

In studying molecular manufacturing, it is common to find that problems are easier to solve than they initially appeared. Convergent assembly requires robotics in a wide range of scales. It also needs a large volume of space for the growing parts to move through. In a simple cube-stacking design, every large component must be divisible along cube boundaries. This imposes constraints on either the design or the placement of the component relative to the cube matrix.

Another set of problems comes from the need to handle only cubes. Long skinny components have to be made in sections and joined together, and supported within each cube. Furthermore, each face of each cube must be stiff, so as to be joined to the adjacent cube. This means that products will be built solid: shells or flimsy structures would require interior scaffolding.

If shapes other than cubes are used, assembly complexity quickly increases, until a nanofactory might require many times more programming and design than a modern "lights-out" factory.

However, planar assembly bypasses all these problems.

Planar Assembly

The idea of planar assembly is to take small modules, all roughly the same size, and attach them to a planar work surface, the working plane of the product under construction. In some ways, this is similar to the concept of 3D inkjet-style prototyping, except that there are billions of inkjets, and instead of ink droplets, each particle would be molecularly precise and could be full of intricate machinery. Also, instead of being sprayed, they would be transported to the workpiece in precise and controlled trajectories. Finally, the workpiece (including any subpieces) would be gripped at the growing face instead of requiring external support.

Small modules supplied by any of a variety of fabrication technologies would be delivered to the assembly plane. The modules would all be of a size to be handled by a single scale of robotic placement machinery. This machinery would attach them to the face of a product being extruded from the assembly plane. The newly attached modules would be held in place until yet newer modules were attached. Thus, the entire face under construction serves as a "handle" for the growing product. If blocks are placed face-first, they will form tight parallel-walled holes, making it hard to place additional blocks; but if the blocks are placed corner-first, they will form pyramid-shaped holes for subsequent blocks to be placed into. Depending on fastening method, this may increase tolerance of imprecision and positional variance in placement.

The speed of this method is counterintuitive; one would expect that the speed of extrusion would decrease as the module size decreased. But in fact, the speed remains constant. For every factor of module size decrease, the number of placement mechanisms that can fit in an area increases as the square of that factor, and the operation speed increases by the same factor. These balance the factor-cubed increase in number of modules to be placed. This analysis breaks down if the modules are made small enough that the placement mechanism cannot scale down along with the modules. However, sub-micron kinematic systems are already being built via both MEMS and biochemistry, and robotics built by molecular manufacturing should be better. This indicates that sub-micron modules can be handled.

Advantages of Planar Assembly

This approach requires only one level of modularity from nanosystems to human-scale products, so it is simpler to design. Blocks (modules) built by a single fabrication system can be as complex as that system can be programmed to produce. Whether the feedstock producing system uses direct covalent deposition or guided self-assembly to build the nanoblocks, the programmable feature size will be sub-nanometer to a few nanometers. Since a single fabrication system can produce blocks larger than 100 nanometers, a fair amount of complexity (several motors and linkages, a sensor array, or a small CPU) could be included in a single module.

Programmable, or at least parameterized, (or at worst case, limited-type) modules would then be aggregated into large systems and "smart materials". Because of the molecular precision of the nanoblocks, and because of the inter-nanoblock connection, these large-scale and multi-scale components could be designed without having to worry about large-scale divisions and fasteners, which are a significant issue in the convergent assembly approach (and also in contemporary manufacturing).

Support of large structures will be much easier in planar assembly than in convergent assembly. In simplistic block-based convergent assembly, each structure (or cleaved subpart thereof) must be embedded in a block. This makes it impossible to build a long thin structure that is not supported along each segment of its length, at least by scaffolding.

In planar assembly, such a structure can be extruded and held at the base even if it is not held anywhere else along its length. The only constraint is the strength of the holding mechanism vs. the forces (vibration and gravity) acting on the system; these forces are proportional to the cube of size, and rapidly become negligible at smaller scales. In addition, the part that must be positioned most precisely -- the assembly plane -- is also the part that is held. Positional variance at the end of floppy structures usually will not matter, since nothing is being done there; in the rare cases where it is a problem, collapsible scaffolds or guy wires can be used. (The temporary scaffolds used in 3D prototyping have to be removed after manufacture, so are not the best design for a fully automated system.)

This indicates that large open-work structures can be built with this method. Unfolding becomes much less of an issue when the product is allowed to have major gaps and dangling structures. The only limit on this is that extrusion speed is not improved by sparse structures, so low-density structures will take longer to build than if built using convergent assembly.

Surface assembly of sub-micron blocks places a major stage of product assembly in a very convenient realm of physics. Mass is not high enough to make inertia, gravity, or vibration a serious problem. (The mass of a one-micron cube is about a picogram, which under 100 G acceleration would experience a nanoNewton of force. This is comparable to the force required to detach 1 square nanometer of van der Waals adhesion (tensile strength 1 GPa, Nanosystems 9.7.1). Resonant frequencies will be on the order of MHz, which is easy to isolate/damp.) Stiffness, which scales adversely with size, is significantly better than at the nanoscale. Surface forces are also not a problem: large enough to be convenient for handling -- instead of grippers, just put things in place and they will stick -- but small enough that surfaces can easily be separated by machinery. (The problems posed by surface forces in MEMS manipulation are greatly exacerbated by the crudity of surfaces and actuation in current technology. Nanometer-scale actuators can easily modulate or supplement surface forces to allow convenient attachment and release.)

Sub-micron blocks are large enough to contain thousands or even millions of features: dozens to thousands of moving parts. But they are small enough to be built directly out of molecules, benefiting from the inherent precision of this approach as well as nanoscale properties including superlubricity. If blocks can be assembled from smaller parts, then block fabrication speed can improve.

Centimeter-scale products can benefit from the ability to directly build large-scale structures, as well as the fine-grained nature of the building blocks (note that a typical human cell is 10,000-20,000 nm wide). For most purposes, the building blocks can be thought of as a continuous smooth material. Partial blocks can be placed to make the surfaces smoother -- molecularly smooth, except perhaps for joints and crystal atomic layer steps.

Modular Design Constraints

Although there is room for some variability in the size and shape of blocks, they will be constrained by the need to handle them with single-sized machinery. A multi-micron monolithic subsystem would not be buildable with this manufacturing system: it would have to be built in pieces and assembled by simple manipulation, preferably mere placement. The "expanding ridge joint" system, described in my Nanofactory paper, appears to work for both strong mechanical joints and a variety of functional joints.

Human-scale product features will be far too large to be bothered by sub-micron grain boundaries. Functions that benefit from miniaturization (due to scaling laws) can be built within a single block. Even at the micron scale, where these constraints may be most troublesome, the remaining design space is a vast improvement over what we can achieve today or through existing technology roadmaps.

Sliding motion over a curved unlubricated surface will not work well if the surface is composed of blocks with 90 degree corners, no matter how small they are. However, there are several approaches that can mitigate this problem. First, there is no requirement that all blocks be complete; the only requirement is that they contain enough surface to be handled by assembly robotics and joined to other blocks. Thus an approximation of a smooth curved surface with no projecting points can be assembled from prismatic partial-cubes, and a better approximation (marred only by joint lines and crystal steps) can be achieved if the fabrication method allows curves to be built. Hydrodynamic or molecular lubrication can be added after assembly; some lubricant molecules might be built into the block faces during fabrication, though this would probably have limited service life. Finally, in clean joints, nanoscale machinery attached to one large surface can serve as a standoff or actuator for another large surface, roughly equivalent to a forest of traction drives.

The grain scale may be large enough to affect some optical systems. In this case, joints like those between blocks can be built at regular intervals within the blocks, decreasing the lattice spacing and rendering it invisible to wave propagation.

See the original NIAC paper for discussion of factory architecture and extrusion speed.

Conclusion and Further Work

Surface assembly is a powerful approach to constructing meter-scale products from sub-micron blocks, which can themselves be built by individual fabrication systems implementing molecular manufacturing or directed self-assembly. Surface assembly appears to be competitive with, and in many cases preferable to, all previously explored systems for general-purpose manufacture of large products. It is hard to find an example of a useful device that could not be built with the technique, and the expected meter-per-hour extrusion rate means that even large products could be built in their final configuration (as opposed to folded).

What this means is that, once we have the ability to build billion-atom (submicron) blocks of nanomachinery, it will be straightforward to combine them into large products. The opportunities and problems of molecular manufacturing can develop even faster than was previously thought.

C-R-Newsletter #25

This month's edition of the C-R-Newsletter has been posted on our main website.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:

Wise-Nano Update
On the Air in Australia
International Congress of Nanotechnology
Innovation, Opportunity, and Commercialization
World Social Forum
Contributions Needed for Conferences
From CRN’s Blog
Feature Essay: Planar Assembly—A better way to build large nano-products

Read the whole newsletter here — and sign up for a free subscription here.

Marketing Solutions

It's not enough simply to come up with creative solutions to problems -- unless solutions can be and actually are implemented, they are not worth much.

For example, global warming is a serious and growing problem, implicated in increasing extremes of weather -- such as heatwaves and hurricanes -- seen in recent years. It's probable that molecular manufacturing (MM) can play a major role in mitigating these problems. But first, we have to get people to pay attention, and then to devote significant resources toward developing and applying nanotech-based solutions.

In an article on Tech Central Station, Howard Lovy describes the efforts of Eric Drexler, John Burch, Mark Sims and others in putting money and effort into effectively marketing MM as a serious solution for big problems.

Even blogs like this one can have a positive impact on people's perception of nanotechnology. By the way, do you know what "blog" means? If so, congratulations!

Mike Treder

Darwin says: Cooperate

Back in the 1980's, Darwin was cited as a justification for unbridled competition. "Nature, red in tooth and claw." "Only the strong survive." "Natural-born killers." "Survival of the fittest." And so on.

But that's not really what Darwin said. Helena Cronin has spent 20 years carefully reading what Darwin actually wrote. "Darwin himself said that the war of nature 'is not incessant' and that 'the happy survive and multiply.'" Darwin also documented many examples of altruism, an organism helping another at cost to itself.

Altruism has two evolutionary justifications. It can help your kin survive, giving your genes a boost even if it hurts you personally. And if you'll be interacting with someone long-term, it's often better for you to trade favors than to ignore or sabotage each other.

Cronin applies this to modern business, and even goes so far as to suggest that a "gift economy" without monetary scorekeeping could make everyone better off, at least in some cases such as software. "When someone gives you money, you don't feel the same emotions that you feel when someone demonstrates a kindness. We are too quick to interpret everything as marginal that does not fit our economic model."

What's really cool is that Cronin presented these ideas to the World Economic Forum in Davos, and her ideas were written up in FastCompany.

Cronin suggests that we should be working to create situations that invoke our hard-wired--but sometimes recessive--altruism behavior. Openness, trust, and an understanding that we really are wired to be altruistic can promote more altruism.

Some quotes from the article:

"The formula is not tit for tat. Rather, it's another rule that the paranoid can hardly fathom: "What goes around comes around." By putting people in contact with one another, Norman helps new businesses begin, the pie gets bigger for everyone, and sooner or later Norman benefits. It's a new law -- not of diminishing returns or of increasing returns, but of exponential returns."

"This may be Cronin's most compelling argument -- and the hardest for traditional business players to accept: Competition is not mortal or moral combat. In the animal kingdom, it's simply an opportunity to show off."

".... Darwinian misreading: Only the strong survive, and the outcome will be better if you have people of first-rate strength. These assumptions have become the foundation of growth, progress, and capitalism: stronger, better, more. But they are not part of Darwinism. Darwin's insight was that competition can lead to all sorts of new ecological niches."

The connection to molecular manufacturing should be obvious: MM will give us many opportunities to be massively altruistic, and altruism can build on itself to improve everyone's relations and promote everyone's well-being. Part of preparing for molecular manufacturing should include making it easy to be altruistic.

But on the subject of preparing for MM, the article has some cautionary notes: "Strategy is a badly flawed approach to problems." And, "Visions don't come from on high. Change comes from the ground up, from genes and subtle shifts in nature." In other words, we can't simply decide how we want things to be.

Chris