Design levels
Back: technology level III
Atomistic level design
This is the art of designing diamondoid molecular elements DMEs.
To do so there was developed a useful software tool called Nanoengineer-1 [1] [2]
[Todo: add design tips]
Lower bulk limit design
Bigger structures where atomic detail may matter less or which are simply not simulatable yet because of limited computation power may be designd with conventional methods of solid modelling.
A vew issues have to be thought about though:
- Since we operate on the lowermost size level there needs to be set a minimum wall thickness that must not be deceeded
- surfaces should be kept parallel to the main crystallographic faces such that they will not create random steps when auto-filled with virtual atoms.
[todo add links to demo collection]
More information can be found in Nanosystems section 9.3.2
System level design
This sort of design involves one or more of:
- three dimensional placement of huge amounts of standard components
- topological interconnections
- temporal organisation in a dynamic setting
- IO logistics of all the media (materials,information,engergy,...) to handle
- emulation of physical (especially mechanical) properties
For products it is especially relevant in the design of the (yet speculative) advanced metamaterials.
Examples are: elasticity emulation; infinitesimal gear bearings; organisation of microcomponent and DME recycling; legged block mobility ...
In AP manufacturing systems it determines the mapping of the abstract assembly levels into a concrete three dimensional layout of a nanofactory.
Today (2013) it is rather diffecult to do work on this area. Lots of questions need to be answerded.
A big problem at this design level is that the sizes of the diverse functional components and the locations of their connection points are yet unknown.
Helpful may be a software capable of crystallographic space subdivision (space groups) and piecewise connection of different crystal strctures with compatible 2D crossections (plane groups). Scale invariant symmetries (fractal symmetries) are also of high relevance especially in redundancy design thats e.g. needed in artificial motor-muscles design.
