The Advantages Of Nanotechnology

One of the basic principles of nanotechnology is positional control. At the macroscopic scale, the idea that we can hold parts in our hands and assemble them by properly positioning them with respect to each other goes back to prehistory: we celebrate ourselves as the tool using species. Our wisdom and our knowledge would have done us scant good without an opposable thumb: we’d still be shivering in the bushes, unable to start a fire.

At the molecular scale, the idea of holding and positioning molecules is new and almost shocking. However, as long ago as 1959 Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, said that nothing in the laws of physics prevented us from arranging atoms the way we want: “…it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.”¹

What would it mean if we could inexpensively make things with every atom in the right place?

• For starters, we could continue the revolution in computer hardware right down to molecular gates and wires — something that today’s lithographic methods (used to make computer chips) could never hope to do.
• We could inexpensively make very strong and very light materials: shatterproof diamond in precisely the shapes we want, by the ton, and over fifty times lighter than steel of the same strength.
• We could make a Cadillac that weighed fifty kilograms, or a full-sized sofa you could pick up with one hand.
• We could make surgical instruments of such precision and deftness that they could operate on the cells and even molecules from which we are made — something well beyond today’s medical technology.

The list goes on — almost any manufactured product could be improved, often by orders of magnitude.