Nanorobotics - Part 1

Nanorobotics deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with nanometer-scale dimensions. As an atom has a diameter of a few Ångstroms (1 Å = 0.1 nm = 10-10 m), and a molecule´s size is a few nanometers, nanorobotics is concerned with interactions with atomic- and molecular-sized objects, and is sometimes called molecular robotics. Requicha adds nanomanipulation as a synonym. It seems that the birth of nanotechnology is associated with a talk by Nobel-prize winner Richard Feynman entitled "There is plenty of room at the bottom" in 1959 at the California Institute of Technology.

In it Feynman asks: "Why can´t we write the entire 24 volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?" And he goes on to describe how could we write it and read it, which is a fair anticipation of computer chip nanolithography: "We could first make, perhaps by some photo process, a screen which has holes in it in the form of letters. Then we would strike an arc behind the holes and draw metallic ions through the holes; then we could again use our system of lenses and make a small image in the form of ions, which would deposit the metal on the pin".

To read what is written, "we would press the metal into a plastic material and make a mold of it, then peel the plastic off very carefully, evaporate silica into the plastic to get a very thin film, then shadow it by evaporating gold at an angle against the silica so that all the little letters will appear clearly, dissolve the plastic away from the silica film, and then look through it with an electron microscope".

Feynman knows what he´s talking about, and his source is biological. He said that the fact that enormous amounts of information can be carried in an exceedingly small space is well known to biologists, because in the tiniest cell, all of the information for the organization of a complex creature such as ourselves can be stored. He even goes directly to the point and talks about putting nanoscale bodies to work: "Many of the cells are very tiny, but they are very active; they manufacture various substances, they walk around, they wiggle; and they do all kinds of marvelous things - all on a very small scale. Also, they store information. Consider the possibility that we too can make a thing very small which does what we want - that we can manufacture an object that maneuvers at this level". This is the launching of nanorobotics, no doubt.

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