Positional assembly

Positional assembly:

• is the complement to all forms of Self assembly
• does not need thermal motion to work such as most forms of self assembly (except Selfassembly without thermal motion)
• does need to sufficiently control thermal motion to prevent placement errors
• does not require the parts that are supposed to be assembled to encode their target position into their structure.
  Thus added parts can be smaller (molecule fragment moieties or sometimes single atoms in the limit)
  Thus stiffer (better) materials can be assembled
• can be combined with self assembly.
  Like e.g. in the site activation method and in tether assisted self assembly.

If thermally driven assembly is still partly involved than it is semi positional assembly.

Relation to mechanosynthesis and piezochemistry

• (1) Both positional assembly and (positional assembly combined with piezochemistry) all counts to the more general concept of mechanosynthesis
• (2) Positional assembly combined with piezochemistry is piezochemical mechanosynthesis – (desired target capability)

(1) In other words:
Mechanosynthesis ...

• ... is at least positional assembly.
• ... does not need to be capable of applying high mechanical forces.
• ... can be capable of applying high mechanical forces (a highly desired skill)
  if it is capable of applying high mechanical forces then it is piezochemical mechanosynthesis.

Related

• Spectrum of means of assembly
• Introduction of total positional control
• Lattice scaled stiffness

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• Self assembly & Thermally driven self-assembly