ABSTRACT
One of the most unifying concepts in nanotechnology is that of “molecular manufacturing,” ultimately to be achieved at the nanoscale. This concept, or at least the study of technologies that may contribute to its realization, is central to much of the theory and practice of nanoscience and nanoengineering. This focus is manifest not only in the development and application of instrumentation-based nanotechnologies such as the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and the atomic force microscope (AFM), that have made it possible to manipulate and organize individual atoms, but also in what are often cited as foundational documents of nanotechnology, such as Feynman’s “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” (based on a 1959 lecture [1]) and “Innitesimal machinery” (a 1983 lecture published a decade later [2]), and Drexler’s 1981 “Molecular engineering” paper [3]. Despite Feynman’s tipping of his hat to “the marvelous biological system” and the power of biological information systems, or Drexler’s early focus on protein engineering and biological equivalents to mechanical devices, and the later emergence of a robust eld of biomimetic nanotechnology, the concepts of what came to be called the “Feynman machine” (able to manipulate individual atoms) and the construction of ever-smaller machines by larger machines, or nanoscale mimics of macroscale devices such as gears, and so on, has had a huge inuence in the popular conception of what denes nanotechnology. For the purposes of discussion, for lack of a better term, this approach will be referred to
1.1 Background .......................................................................................................1 1.2 Historical Origins of the Nanotechnology Concept .........................................2 1.3 Why Nanoscience and Nanoengineering Are Necessary .................................4 1.4 Fundamental Differences in the Materials, Composition, Design, and
Manufacturing of Macroscopic Machines vs. The Nanomachinery of Life ....5 1.5 Conclusions .......................................................................................................8 References ..................................................................................................................9
