Nanobot or Microbot?

From: Fred Chen (flipsu5_at_comcast.net)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: 8 Sep 2004 02:51:44 GMT

Nanobots are possibly the most popularized objects of nanotechnology.

However, realistically, it seems that anything less than 100 nm can
only be composed of at most ~10 million atoms. Most probably any
functional part will have a size on the order of 10 nm, so (to me)
this leaves little room for any complex functionality. As an example,
just consider how much instructional memory can a nanobot hold - 1 MB
is already a challenge (not enough atoms).

Then there is the issue of communication with the nanobots. Antenna
size scales with the wavelength. So forget infrared or wireless (RF).
Wavelengths shorter than 100 nm are absorbed strongly (within tens of
nanometers) by all condensed materials and are hard to generate in
such small volumes (and the resulting heat may blow them apart). The
idea of long-distance remote communication is clearly impossible. That
does not rule out the possibility of nearest-neighbor type
communications.

An additional consideration is the fact that on the molecular scale in
non-vacuum environments, there is always Brownian motion. This is
essentially thermal molecular motion impinging on nanobots, causing
them to jostle around. The smaller (or more exactly, the less massive)
the object the more severely it is bumped around.

All in all, considering that nanobots need memory, processing power,
internal motion ability, transportation mobility and sensors, I think
that the smallest such entity would have to be many, many microns
wide. Hence, they may be considered "microbots", instead of
"nanobots".

There is no reason for nanotechnologists to despair at this, since the
same nanoscience and nanotechnology can now be applied in a more
realistic scale. There is also the potential to overlap with
tehcnology in the thriving MEMS (MicroElectroMechanics) sector.

I would like to hear some thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Fred

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