Microcomponent

Microcomponents are (re)composable functional units. They make up diamondoid metamaterials and thus provide the basis for advanced AP products. Microcomponents are mainly composed / buit out of standard diamondoid molecular elements and are in the size range from roughly 0.1µm to 5.0µm. Their size constitutes a trade-off between re-usability and space usage efficiency. In technology level III) their size is limited by the assembly level II building chamber sizes if starting from assembly level III a clean non inert gas (e.g. air) environment is allowed. For the creation of bulk monolithic (un-recyclable) structures the nanofactory must be completely "filled" with vacuum (or noble gas). The manipulators of assembly level III then too can fuse together diamondoid surface interfaces together. Higher stages of convergent assembly of bulk monolithic crystals may to be avoided because self alignment becomes more difficult. See Nanosystems Fig 14.1. for a possible approach.

Since it can be desirable to operate microcomponents in a non vacuum environment (separation of assembly levels) and one should want to be able to recycle them, microcomponents should have no exposed open bonds ( = chemical radicals) on their external surfaces and should preferably use reversible locking mechanisms an should be meaningfully tagged.

In the simplest case one could use a simple cube as delimiting base shape. Stacking them then forms a simple cubic microcomponent crystal. To get less anisotropic behavior of metamaterials one can make them have the shape of either of:

• truncated octahedrons (the Wigner Seitz cell of the body centered cubic system bcc) preserve parts of the cubes <100> surface planes and expose much of the <111> octahedral planes which are conveniently normal to diamond bonds (when standard orientation is choosen) Completely flat surfaces for Van der Waals bonding can be used since partly finished assemblies always have (in contrast to partly finished assemblies of simple cubes) dents that prevent side-ward sliding.
• rhombic dodecaherdons (the Wigner Seitz cell of the face centered cubic system fcc)

Base cells of more complicated crystal structures or even quasi-crystals will make geometric reasoning exceedingly hard and will therefore probably only be considered if needed for a good reason. Some examples:

• tetrahedrons and octahedrons ("geomag-spacefill")
• space fills not derived from crystal structure base cells
• Weaire–Phelan structure - structure with the least surface area (yet unproven)

Further shapes are:

• tubbing segments (like in tunnel construction work) for curved parts of several µm size
• adapter cells from one space-fill to another
• partly rounded cells for outer shells

Microcomponents are also mentioned on the "assembly levels" page and all over the place on this wiki.

sub microcomponent structures

The inside of a microcomponent is usually a monolithic diamondoid machine structure created by irreversible fusion of surface interfaces in assembly level II irreparable if damaged and at best testable.

Internal reversible joints are possible but may waste too much space. Van der Waals joints (flat surface contact sticking) waste almost no space but one must take care. The internal structure shouldn't be weaker bonded than the bonds between the microcomponents. Accidental or intentional breaking of structures could then create a big mess.

Encapsulating Van der Waals assemblies seems to be a good choice if applicable. Like with letters in a book press a mill style robotic mechanosynthetic cores could be assembled with a reversibly matter-hardcoded program.

super microcomponent structures

Some systems stretch over many microcomponents and thus can't be counted to the diamondoid metamaterials as a whole. Diamondoid heat pump systems are one example, nanofactories another.

Systems for quasi welding will be pretty big and probably implemented around the size range of microcomponents and located at distances perceivable by human vision.