Revision as of 18:47, 4 January 2014

Diamondoid molecular elements (DMEs) are structural elements or machine elements at the lower physical size limit. They often are highly symetrical. Since metals are unsuitable (they lack directed bonds and tend to diffuse) diamondoid materials must be used.

• DM machine elements (DMMEs) (examples) like bearigs and gears have completely passivated surfaces.
• DM structural elements (DMSEs) (example) are minimally sized structural building blocks that are only partially passivated. They expose multiple radicals on some of their surfaces that act as AP welding interfaces to complementary surfaces. The step of connecting surface interfaces is done in assembly level II and is irreversible.

Name suggestion: since DMEs are somewhat of a cross between crystals and molecules why not call them "crystolecules"

• DME ... Diamodoid Molecular Element (stiff - small - minimal)
• DMME ... D.M. Machine Element
• DMSE ... D.M. Structural Element

Diamondoid molecular machine elements

Images of some examples.

Types

Bearings

[Todo: describe incommensurate superlubrication & pullout bearing effect & "binary" effect]

Fasteners

[Todo: describe locking mechanisms: hierarchical; barrier; difference to makro; covaconn;...]

Others

[Todo: gears, pumps, telescoptc rods .... DME issues lack of ball curvature & DMSEs?]

Sets

Minimal set of compatible DMMEs

In electric circuits there is one topological and three kinds of basic passive elements.
Adding an active switching element one can create a great class of circuits.
0) fork node; 1) capacitors; 2) inductors; 3) resistors

Those passive elements have a direct correspondences in rotative or reciprocating mechanics namely:
0) planetary or differential gearbox [*]; 1) springs; 2) inertial masses; 3) friction elements
[*] and analogons for reciprocating mechanics

But there are limits to the electric-mechanic analogy. Some mechanic elements often differ significantly from their electric counterparts in their qualitative behavior. Two examples of elements quite different in behaviour are:

• transistors & locking pins
• transformers & gearboxes

With creating a set of standard sizes of those elements and a modular building block system to put them together creating rather complex systems can be done in a much shorter time.
Like in electronics one can first create a schematics and subsequently the board.

To do: Create a minimal set of minimal sized DMMEs for rotative nanomechanics. Modular housing structures standard bearings and standard axle redirectioning are also needed.

To investigate: how can reciprocating mechanics be implemented considereng the passivation bending issue

Diamondoid molecular structural elements

An example of a diamondoid molecular structural element (DMSE). The bright red spots are open bonds.

sets

[Todo: describe standardized building block systems]

General properties

soft or hard?

DMEs with carbon, silicon carbide or silicon as core material can be can have internal structure like

• diamond / lonsdaleite
• or other possibly strained sp³ configurations.

Due to the lack of defects the ultimate tensile strength of larger DMEs lies above diamond of thermodynamic origin.

When viewing the thickness of a surface as the distance from the point of maximally attractive VdW force to the point of equally repulsive VdW force (experienced by some probing tip) the thickness of the surface relative to the thickness of the diamondoid part is enormous. This makes DMEs somewhat soft in compressibility but not all that much as can be guessed by the compressibility of single crystalline graphite which is a stack of graphene sheets.