Thermodynamic means
production/synthesis/making-of materials via thermodynamic means shall here refer to
all conventional means excluding advanced forms of mechanosynthesis.
In particular excluding piezochemical mechanosynthesis.
"Thermodynamic means" include:
- Mixing and melting in complex sequences – like present in the production of metals, alloys, thermoplastics, duroplastics, and similar
- Crystallization form solutions or melts – like for silicon wavers or optical crystals
- sublimation from the gas phase – like in CVD processes – (for exceptions see below)
"Thermodynamic means" exclude:
- advanced forms of mechanosynthesis.
- piezochemical mechanosynthesis
Grey zones (semi thermodynamic means):
- Sublimation from the gas phase onto atomically precise patterns (See: Patterned layer epitaxy)
- Natural "semi thermodynamic" processes – like the growth of wood, biomineralization, ...
Furthermore:
- A thermodynamic mean: – non-terminating self assembly – this includes 360° filling n-fold rotation symmetric assemblies
- A semi thermodynamic mean: – terminating self assembly – this excludes 360° filling n-fold rotation symmetric assemblies
Treat a full 360° rotation for rotational freedom equally to infinity for a translatory freedom.
Contents
But there are no systems that are not thermodynamic! Yes, but ...
Of course in the end all processes are thermodynamic, otherwise they would not have an arrow of time.
It's just that thermodynamic processes can be shifted out to the (abstract) fringes of productive (nano) systems.
And different productive systems do that to a different degree.
This makes a huge difference in the accessibility of metastable structures like neo-polymorphs.
In this regard:
- mix and melt production is highly thermodynamic – especially for metal alloys a bit less for plastic polymers
- natural growth heavily relies on thermodynamic diffusion transport but has quite non thermodynamic compartmentalization systems
Shifting dissipation into impulse space only
Gem-gum nanofactories also have a necessarily themodynamic part.
There needs to be power dissipation somewhere to drive the nanofactory in a forward direction at reasonable speeds.
gem-gum nanofactories though
- aim to get out all entropy from real 3D-space creating the entropy devoid machine phase (one point on only one single degree of freedom).
- aim to keep all dissipation going out purely via impulse space (waste hear rather than melting, evaporating, sublimating, chaotically rearanging)
Ideally the necessary dissipation happens at locations that are not coinciding with where the piezochemical mechanosynthesis happens. That means: Ideally not at directly at the interacting tooltips. Ideally so because this means less necessity for active cooling for the most critical system parts that run best at cryogenic temperatures.
One place to do the dissipation could be the drive and power management system of a gem-gum factory this should be specifically designed to perform well at higher temperatures. But the necessary dissipation could even be outsourced to a macroscale dedicated power dissipation plant.
About shifting the location of dissipation around in real 3D-space
For how this could be done in more detail. See main artilce: Dissipation sharing
Shifting the location of the necessary dissipation around amounts to energy recuperation.
Dissipation sharing involves the back-driving a gearing-down gear-train.
Which might be worrying from a macroscale perspective.
Since we know that back-driving a gear transmission is these are prone to self-locking.
Note though that:
- Friction at the nanoscale is super low due to suprlubricity.
- Thermal motion should be able to "knock open" self locking.
- Inertial mass is not much counter-acting because the typical (proposed) speeds are way below scale natural speeds
Most losses (part of dissipation that fails to be shifted someplace else) are maybe due to local flexing near the most geared down parts.
- near the interacting tooltips in piezochemical mechanosynthesis
- near the interacting tips in chemomechanical converters
(TODO: Calculatuins and experiments will be needed to get a clearer picture about the shiftability of dissipation.)
