Thermally driven self assembly
From apm
Thermally driven assembly is also called called self assembly or brownian assembly (seldom) There's huge amount of literature on thermally driven assembly.
Wikipedia: self assembly; molecular self assembly
- technology level 0 thermally driven assembly is already extensively used (e.g. structural DNA nanotechnology) this will continue onward into technology level I|I of the development of atomically precise manufacturing (APM).
- In technology level I and technology level II|II stages of APM development: brownian mechanosynthesis could be an intermediate step to advanced APM systems.
- In technology level II and technology level III|III stages of APM development: self assisted assembly will come to intensive use.
Beside the actual function of the building block (structural element/machine element) completely unguided thermally driven assembly requires the building blocks to be have a unambiguous unique puzzle piece shape that determines its target position. (everything that can stick will stick)
- Brownian assembly is generally slower then advanced directed assembly like mechanosynthesis. (numbers needed)
- The ambient temperature dictates diffusion speed.
- Lower dimensionality that is diffusion on a surface instead of a volume or on a line instead of a surface speeds up the process.
- Dividing one long diffusion path to several shorter irreversible diffusion transport stretches speeds up the process.
