How macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale outperforms its native scale
There are at least two major contributing factors:
More info on page: Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
Contents
Performance boosting factor 1: Same relative deflections across scales
Deflections being scale invariant is one important reason for why macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale works better rather than worse at the nanoscale.
As discussed in applicability of macro 3D printing for nanomachine prototyping:
What we absolutely do not want is to accidentally build a prototype macroscale systems with performance so high that
target nanoscale systems of equal geometry will not be able to replicate that performance.
The result for scaling of relative deflections that are due to machine motions implies that we do not have to fear that.
In fact for us to build a macroscale system that has the same or higher performance than the target nanoscale systems we would have to use materials ...
- with a tensile modulus as high as diamond
- with a density as low as diamond
- with a maximal strain (bendability) in the double digit percentual range.
Such materials simply do not exist today. Ceramics come closest to stiffness but they're totally not elastic.
(Future gem-gum metamaterials might come close.)
That's the 🤯 degree of how much macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
works better than our good old macroscale machinery at its native macroscale.
Performance boosting factor 2: Higher throughput of smaller machinery
And that (factor1) does not even factor in that we can easily afford to go a 100x to a 1000x slower with speeds
by compensating with more nanomachinery (as is possible due to higher throughput of smaller machinery).
This is not an option for the (in comparison extremely voluminous) macromachinery.
Summary
When comparing
- real (steel based) macro-machinery with
- hypothetical macro-machinery
Hypothetical macro-machinery natured such,
that when (geometry preservingly) scaled down to the nanoscale it would perform
equally or better than gemstone-based nanomachinery ...
Then one can easily spot the degree of
- inferiority of macroscale style machinery at its native macroscale -versus-
- superiority of macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
Like so:
- steel has less elastic modulus than diamond
- steel has less elasticity than nanoscale flawless diamond (two digit perceptual range)
- steel cannot be moved as slowly as nanoscale machinery as this slowdown would mean impossible mountains of more machinery at the macroscale
