Re: Any recent surveys of molecular nanotechnology?



Assuming anyone is still reading this newsgroup anymore,

Some people are still reading, but I think the quality of the postings
to the group has fallen so far that it drives away what interest
remains.

I'm thinking I may set up a new mailing list devoted solely to true
molecular machines/molecular manufacturing since this group seems to
mostly be about postings from semi-fraudulent computer science
"conference" scams. I may do that by the end of July. Interested persons
may want to contact me.

I'm interested in suggestions or pointers on finding any
nanotechnology survey articles (or close facsimiles.) In my mind, such
survey articles would attempt to address two or more of the following:

0) Author's decomposition and brief description of the elements of a
nanofactory or assembler for reference later in the article.

1) What milestones have so far been passed toward molecular nanotechnology
and how they relate to any of the elements.

There are very few milestones that have been passed at this point.

Much research these days is labeled "nanotechnology", but the vast
majority of it is simply synthetic organic chemistry work or materials
science under another name.

If one is interested in actual molecular machines, only two important
threads of research have been in process of late: on the practical side,
the work on DNA origami (which is still at this point mostly in the
"that's cool"! stage but which might get somewhere), and the theoretical
work that Merkle, Freitas and others continue to push on diamondoid
mechanosynthetic techniques.

The most interesting recent paper from the latter effort was Merkle and
Freitas' massive tooltip paper of last year:
http://www.molecularassembler.com/Papers/MinToolset.pdf

I was rather surprised to see little comment about that paper when it
came out, perhaps because it is a difficult read requiring substantial
background in the subject. (It appears, sadly, that most of those
interested in molecular machines and manufacturing have not learned
enough to be able to contribute much to the field, and those who know
enough, primarily in the chemistry and physics communities etc., don't
understand the overall concept well enough or are otherwise not
involved.)

2) What lab techniques have been developed and are current.

The current lab techniques in DNA origami are well documented. Technique
in the scanning probe microscopy world (of vital interest to the
direct-to-diamondoid mechanosynthetic world) is pretty well documented
in appropriate journals, but is not generally directed at enabling
mechanosynthesis, though the recent work by Philip Moriarty et al may
(or may not) change that.

3) Who in the world is (or was) working on any of the elements or their
prerequisites.

I think I've covered a large chunk of what is happening above. Of
course, it is a tiny fraction of what passes for "nanotechnology" these
days -- if you were just looking for that, you would find vast amounts
in appropriately titled journals, most of which is highly irrelevant.

I definitely haven't kept up with the progress of molecular
nanotechnology. Before I spend countless hours sifting through vast
wads of cruft doing my own survey, I thought it would be advisable to
first see if anyone had done that dirty work anytime in the last, oh,
five years or so. Or even ever, for that matter!

I'm unaware of any comprehensive surveys in the last couple of years. Of
course, "Nanosystems" itself contains an extensive bibliography, but
that is nearly 20 years old at this point. The various Freitas books are
also insanely well footnoted, but again, they are not that recent.

Perry

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