Frontline Nanotech Revolutionaries

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Pine_net

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TELL HOW THEY'RE CHANGING THE WORLD

By Candace Stuart
Small Times Senior Writer

May 28, 2002 -

HOUSTON – Picture this: President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zeming huddled in conversation, discovering a shared passion the emerging field of nanotechnology.
Neal Lane, Clinton's former science and technology assistant and now a professor at Rice University, offered that snapshot Thursday as he described how top-level support spurred efforts such as the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) launched under Clinton.

“The world is changing,” Lane told a capacity crowd at an NNI Regional Symposium on Rice’s campus in Houston. The daylong event was designed to bridge divides between the research, government and business communities using their common interest in nanotechnology.

Like Clinton and Jiang, their enthusiasm about the future of nanotechnology overshadowed institutional differences. And like Lane, most agreed nanotechnology was changing the world.

“I believe that this (nanotechnology) is America’s future, the world’s future, but particularly America’s,” said Phillip Bond, undersecretary of commerce, adding that the Commerce Department has made it a priority to increase industrial commercialization of nanotechnology by helping move discoveries from the lab to the marketplace.

Read on...
 
Well, does anyone know how nano-structures are built? I used to research MEMS in mid to late 90's. Back then that was cutting edge nano-technology. Basically we build tiny structures with Xray lithography.
 
How to build nanostructures

Molecular manipulation is possible at present through several methods. IBM was the first to move individual atoms in 1989 when, at a temperature of -270 Celsius, scientists were able to arrange 35 Xenon atoms into the letters "IBM." The IBM's T.J. Watson research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, then became the first to move atoms at room temperature in 1991, by using electrical pulses to pick up and put back down silicon atoms. Unfortunately, most molecules moved were torn apart in the process.

Then, last year, IBM scientists in Zurich were the first to move molecules by purely mechanical means. Using the tip of an STM (which was, in fact, invented by IBM's Zurich scientists) they physically push molecules across a surface.

This is presently the most widely used method of positioning molecules; with the tip of an STM, SPM, or Atomic Force Microscope.

While the microscopes can provide fairly precise positioning within a few angstroms, sometimes this is overcompensation when working at the scale of nanomachines.

To provide for a more precise method of control, some scientists are proposing seperate nanomanipulators that could be built using the "pushing" technique that would then assist in the manufature of other nanocomponents.

New refinements in control of the AFM tip, however, are beginning to facilitate molecular manipulation without nano-scale manipulators. The nanoManipulator developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel hill is a combination of virtual reality and microscopy technology to create an ingenious and useful tool.

Scientists can position molecules using force feedback controls that respond to the distance relative to other molecules their working with. Combined with a real time supercomputer rendered image of the molecules on which they're working, this is a truly hands on approach to construction.
 
None of the links really say how nanomanipulators are built tho. I know the tips of SEM is built with MEMS technology. I don't know how else they can build something that small.
 
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