Re: Any recent surveys of molecular nanotechnology?


"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.

If you do create such a mailing list, please consider posting
subcription info to this group.

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

That was my uninformed impression.

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.

Don't I know it! It makes finding results I'd like to know about rather
challenging.

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.

It has been relatively straightforward to track publications of Merkle,
Freitas, et al. But I admit I have fallen off the wagon on even tracking
their publications and work.

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

Even though I have devoted little effort to keeping up, I was aware of
that paper. But I never got around to studying it - though it is very
high on my list of things to read!

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.

I first read of the Freitas and Moriarty collaboration in a Life
Extension Foundation article (and pointed the article out back in March
on this newsgroup):

"After working closely for three years with Philip Moriarty, one of the
leading scanning probe microscopists in the UK, our international
colleague is now undertaking direct experiments to build and validate
several of our proposed mechanosynthesis tooltips in his laboratory."

Quoted from the LEF Freitas article:
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2009/jan2009_Nanotechnology-Radically-Extended-Life-Span_01.htm


Your last comment above seems to indicate that Moriarty has published
relevant results. I guess I should go hunt them up - or if you have them
handy perhaps you could post bibliographic details?

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.

I'd say I'm aware of most of the relevant experimental work up to around
2003 but my tracking of the field slowly declined after that. I will
probably have to perform my own "survey" and write something up. If I
do, I probably wont finish till sometime this fall. But I'll post what
I come up with, however bad it is.

.