Nanoscale style machinery at the macroscale
From apm
This page is about using the principles of natural nanomachinery (main focus self assembly by movement driven through intense shaking) for assembly at the macroscale.
Main obstacles:
- much lower speeds – typically much below the speed of sound
- much larger distances
- => much much lower random part encounter rates
The encounter rate of small molecule sized parts at the nanoscale due to thermal motion is mindbogglingly high.
To get an intuitive feel about just how much macroscale is at a disadvantage see page: The speed of atoms
This obstacle can be hit when scaling termination control and site addressability in
technologies that use thermally driven self-assembly to raher large scales.
Like e.g. already the casein the higher selfassembly levels of structural DNA nanotechnology.
Related
- Complementary page to: Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
This one is not related to many of the common misconceptions about atomically precise manufacturing though.
- Scaling law – selfassembly driven by shaking (even if artificially introduced) scales badly to the macroscale
- Nonthermal self-assembly – this works well at the macroscale too
