Why gemstone metamaterial technology should work in brief

(wiki-TODO: Page lost it's claimed brevity, needs split-up eventually.)

The idea of atomically precise gemstone based on-chip factories and their technology has faced major disbelieve and push-back in the past.
Here are the probably hardest arguments for this tech to be actually possible summarized in as brief a way as possible.

Regarding concerns about friction

Coaxial nanotube bearing based nano-motors have been experimentally built and tested. While still very crude they already show very little friction. Much unlike the problems with sticktion and wear in photolithographically produced MEMS systems. – Coaxial nanotubes are quite similar in characteristics to crystolecule bearing so the working nanotube bearings give experimental evidence for crystolecular elements working with low friction an wear free.

Concerns about friction have been experimentally dispelled (not only theoretically).
Coaxial nanotubes are already experimentally accessible and they indeed show superlubricity.

• Newer (2017) work on friction (theoretical and experimental).
  See: Evaluating the Friction of Rotary Joints in Molecular Machines (paper)
• Theoretical estimations on frictions can be found in the book: Nanosystems

More info on and discussion of less common concerns here:

• Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
• Friction

Experimental demonstration of superlubric sliders and rotator and vdW suck-in

• (closed access) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaa4157
• (suplementary material) https://www.science.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1126%2Fscience.aaa4157&file=koren.sm.pdf
• (graphical abstract) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276065197_Surface_science_Adhesion_and_friction_in_mesoscopic_graphite_contacts

From the abstract:
"… adhesion energy of 0.227 ± 0.005 joules per square meter, in excellent agreement with theoretical models … "
( referring to supplementary material and other closed access paper https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.71.235415 )
"… bistable all-mechanical memory cell structures and rotational bearings have been realized by exploiting position locking, which is provided solely by the adhesion energy …"

From the main text:
"To assure the feasibility of surface force-driven actuation, we must require that the friction forces are negligible with respect to the line tension forces; …"
"… we conclude that line tension forces dominate friction forces down to structure sizes with a radius of ~2 nm. This result is encouraging in view of the technical feasibility of graphene-based nanomechanical devices. However, structures with dimensions on the order of tens of nanometers would still be required in order to guarantee low-energy dissipation actuation in line with the low value of the mean friction force."

Things to note that are not mentioned in the paper:
– This is all about static friction.
– Due to no constraints forcing an perfect incommensurate alignment
they got a pseudo–random walk and a huge spread of local friction forces (sometime negative).
Overall still extremely low static friction though (µ = 7*10^-5) easily overpowered by vdW suck-in forces (line tension).
– The energy barriers at smaller scales are not compared to kT where undercutting this would practically make for exactly µ=0.

Pathway concerns

direct path

Scaling along the direct path is much more challenging than over the incremental path because:
– basic in-very-good-vacuum force applying mechanosynthesis needs to be developed as unconditional prerequisite and.
– both parallelization and miniaturization of that process once it is working sufficiently well is hard.

For the first critically necessary step along the direct path see page:
Why force applying mechanosynthesis should work in brief

For scaling it up see page:
Why scaling mechanosynthesis to macroscale throughput should work in brief
Most importantly to note here is that unlike widespread belief it is not critically necessary to get to an ultra compact molecular assembler to get feasible scaling.
Rather there are much more realistic and practical approaches very much avoiding actively pressing for compact self-replication.
See: Early diamondoid nanosystem pixel (direct path)

Incremental path

• Progress in hierarchical self-assembly. (wiki-TODO: Add reference to and discussion of papers.)
• Progress in synthesis of potential stiff high symmetry building block molecules
• Progress in synthesis of AP nanographene molecules
• Progress with spiroligomers
  (possibly an early bridge between incremental path and direct path)

mixed path

Scaling along the mixed path may progress towards advanced nanosystems easier
by combining the strengths of each side.

But as of today (early 2026) each path still needs to develop much further
such that mutually beneficial mixed path options start to emerge as actually existing opportunities.
qPlus nc-AFM on spiroligomers on suefaces is perhaps one of the things accessible at the very earliest.

Related

• Experimental demonstrations of single atom manipulation
• Common misconceptions about atomically precise manufacturing
• Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
• Higher throughput of smaller machinery – Scaling laws
• Exploratory engineering

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• Superlubricity
• Piezochemical mechanosynthesis