SEMINARON

NANOTECHNOLOGY

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:MR.PRADEEP MITTAL MR.PANKAJ SHARMA ROLLNO:57

MCA (!st sem)

Dept. of computer science and application

(kuk. University)

1. WHAT IS NANOTECHNOLOGY?

1

The definition most frequently used by government and industry involves structures,devices , and system having novel properties and functions due to the arrangement of their atoms on the 1 to 100 nanometer scale.Many fields of endeavor contribute to Nanotechnology,including molecular physics, materials science,chemistry,biology,computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Due to the extreme breadth and generality of this definition, many prefer to use the tern “Nanotechnologies”.“Nanotechnology” refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, highly advanced products.

2. WHY DEVELOP NANOTECHNOLOGY?

2

Gaining better control over the structure of matter has been a primary project of our species since we started chipping flint. The quality of all human-made goods depends on the arrangement of their atoms. The cost of our products depends on how difficult it is for us to get the atoms and molecules to connect up the way we want them. The amount of energy used - and pollution created - depends on the methods we use to place and connect the molecules into a given product. The goal of nanotechnology is to improve our control over how we build things, so that our products can be of the highest quality and while causing the lowest environmental impact. Nanotech is even expected to help us heal the damage our past cruder and dirtier technologies have caused to the biosphere.

Nanotechnology has been identified as essential in solving many of the problems facing humanity. Specifically, it is the key to addressing the Foresight Nanotech Challenges:

3. HOW WILL NANOTECNOLOGY IMPROVE OUR LIVES.

3

(a).ADVANCE NANOTECH CAN SOLVE MANY HUMAN PROBLEMS. Technology is not a panacea. However, it can be extremely useful in solving many kinds of problems. Improved housing and plumbing will increase health. More efficient agriculture and industry save water, land, materials, and labor, and reduce pollution. Cheap, reliable power is vital for the use of other technologies and provides many conveniences. Today, technology relies on distributed manufacturing, which requires many specialized materials and machines and highly trained labor. It is a difficult and slow process to develop an adequate technology base in an impoverished area. However, molecular manufacturing does not require skilled labor or a large supporting infrastructure; a single nanofactory with a single chemical supply and power supply can produce a wide range of useful, reliable products, including copies of itself to double the manufacturing infrastructure in hours, if desired.

(b).Many diverse problems are related to Water.

A few basic problems create vast amounts of suffering and tragedy. According to a World Bank document, water is a major concern of the U.N. Almost half the world's population lacks access to basic sanitation, and almost 1.5 billion have no access to clean water. Of the water used in the world, 67% is used for agriculture, and another 19% for industry. Residential use accounts for less than 9%. Much industry can be directly replaced by molecular manufacturing. Agriculture can be moved into greenhouses. Residential water can be treated and recycled. Adoption of these steps could reduce water consumption by at least 50%, and probably 90%. Water-related diseases kill thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of children each day. This is entirely preventable with basic technology, cheap to manufacture—if the

4

factories are cheap and portable. MNT can provide similar opportunities in many other areas.

(c).Cheap greenhouses can save water, Land and food.

Moving agriculture into greenhouses can recover most of the water used, by dehumidifying the exhaust air and treating and re-using runoff. Additionally, greenhouse agriculture requires less labor and far less land area than open-field agriculture, and provides greater independence from weather conditions including seasonal variations and droughts. Greenhouses, with or without thermal insulation, would be extremely cheap to build with nanotechnology. A large-scale move to greenhouse agriculture would reduce water use, land use, and weather-related food shortages.

(d). Computers will be cheap enough for Everyone.

Molecular manufacturing can create computer logic gates a few nanometers on a side, and efficient enough to be stacked in 3D. An entire supercomputer can fit into a cubic millimeter, and

cost a small fraction of a cent.

(e). Nanotech can help the environment.

5

Environmental degradation is a serious problem with many sources and causes. Mining is another serious problem.With the help of nanotechnology we can build most the substance out of carbon and hydrogen results in far less use for minerals, and mining operations can be mostly shut down. Manufacturing technologies that pollute can also be scaled back.

(f). Improved medicine can be widely Available.

Molecular nanotechnology will impact the practice of medicine in many ways. Medicine is highly complex, so it will take some time for the full benefits to be achieved, but many benefits will occur almost immediately. The tools of medicine will become cheaper and more powerful. Research and diagnosis will be far more efficient, allowing rapid response to new diseases, including engineered diseases. Small, cheap, numerous sensors, computers, and other implantable devices may allow continuous health monitoring and semi-automated treatment. Several new kinds of treatment will become possible. As the practice of medicine becomes cheaper and less uncertain, it can become available to more people.

4. Molecular manufacturing

6

  Molecular manufacturing (MM) means the ability to build devices, machines, and eventually whole products with every atom in its specified place. The goal of molecular nanotechnology (MNT) is to manufacture complex products with almost every atom in its proper place. This requires building large molecular shapes and then assembling them into products. The molecules must be built by some form of chemistry. Many MNT proposals assume that building shapes of the required variety and complexity will require robotic placement (covalent bonding) of small chemical pieces. Once the molecular shapes are made, they must be combined to form structures and machines. Again, this is probably done most easily by robotic assembly. Theoretical studies have shown that it should be possible to build diamond lattice by mechanically guided chemistry, or mechanochemistry. By building the lattice in various directions, a wide variety of parts can be made. Although there are several possible ways to develop an MNT capability, the best way appears to be the creation of fabricators and then nanofactories that can make diamond lattice. Diamond is very strong, and can be used to build a wide variety of useful gadgets including motors and computers. This implies that the products of a nanofactory will also be strong, and that active functionality can be extremely compact. For example, an engine powerful enough to drive a car would fill less than a cubic centimeter, and a modern supercomputer would require less than a cubic millimeter. Diamond structure would be at least ten times as strong as steel for the same weight—probably closer to 100 times as strong.

Nanotechnology can make big things as well as small things. An attractive approach is to use convergent assembly, which can rapidly make products whose size is measured in meters starting from building blocks whose size is measured in nanometers.

7

It is based on the idea that smaller parts can be assembled into larger parts; larger parts can be assembled into still larger parts, and so forth. This process can be systematically repeated in a hierarchical fashion, creating architecture able to span the size range from the molecular to the macroscopic.

5. DANGERS OF MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY.

8

(a). Disruption of the basis of economy is a Strong possibility.

The purchaser of a manufactured product today is paying for its design, raw materials, the labor and capital of manufacturing, transportation, storage, and sales. Additional money—usually a fairly low percentage—goes to the owners of all these businesses. If nanofactories can produce a wide variety of products when and where they are wanted, most of this effort will become unnecessary. This raises several questions about the nature of a post-nanotech economy. Will products become cheaper?  Will capitalism disappear?  Will most people retire—or be unemployed?  The flexibility of nanofactory manufacturing, and the radical improvement of its products, implies that non-nanotech products will not be able to compete in many areas. If nanofactory technology is exclusively owned or controlled, will this create the world's biggest monopoly, with extreme potential for abusive anti-competitive practices?  If it is not controlled, will the availability of cheap copies mean that even the designers and brand marketers don't get paid? 

(b).Criminals and terrorists could make Effective use of the technology

9

Criminals and terrorists with stronger, more powerful, and much more compact devices could do serious damage to society. Defenses against these devices may not be installed immediately or comprehensively. Terrorists could have a field day. Chemical and biological weapons could become much more deadly and much easier to conceal. Many other types of terrifying devices are possible, including several varieties of remote assassination weapons that would be difficult to detect or avoid. If such devices were available from a black market or a home factory, it would be quite difficult to detect them before they were used

(c). Society could be disrupted by the Availability of new "immoral" Products.

New products and lifestyles may cause significant social disruption. For example, medical devices could be built into needles narrower than a bacterium, perhaps allowing easy brain modification or stimulation, with effects similar to any of a variety of psycho actives.

(d). Nanotech weapons would be Extremely powerful and could lead to

10

A dangerously unstable arms race.

Molecular manufacturing raises the possibility of horrifically effective weapons. As an example, the smallest insect is about 200 microns; this creates a plausible size estimate for a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon capable of seeking and injecting toxin into unprotected humans. The human lethal dose of botulism toxin is about 100 nanograms, or about 1/100 the volume of the weapon. As many as 50 billion toxin-carrying devices—theoretically enough to kill every human on earth—could be packed into a single suitcase. Guns of all sizes would be far more powerful, and their bullets could be self-guided. Aerospace hardware would be far lighter and higher performance; built with minimal or no metal, it would be much harder to spot on radar. Embedded computers would allow remote activation of any weapon, and more compact power handling would allow greatly improved robotics. These ideas barely scratch the surface of what's possible.

6. Where is nanotechnology being? Developed?Research and development of nanotechnology is taking place

11

worldwide. As this is written, government spending is at approximately one billion U.S. dollars in each of four global areas: (1) the United States, (2) Europe, (3) Japan, and (4) the rest of the world, including China, Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and India. Similar amounts are said to be being spent in the private sector, with these figures being quite difficult to determine accurately due to the breadth of the nanotech definition, which includes a large number of older technologies.

7. ESTIMATING A TIME LINE FOR NANOTECHNOLOGY.

Today the theories for using mechanical chemistry to directly fabricate nanoscale structures are well-developed and awaiting progress in enabling technologies. Assuming all this theory works—and no one has established a problem with it yet—exponential

12

general-purpose molecular manufacturing appears to be inevitable. It might be become a reality by 2010, likely will by 2015, and almost certainly will by 2020. When it arrives, it will come quickly. MM can be built into a self-contained, tabletop factory that makes cheap products efficiently at molecular scale. The time from the first fabricator to a flood of powerful and complex products may be less than a year.Once the first desktop nanofactory has been built, its first product likely will be another identical nanofactory. Then, following the simple math of exponential duplication, it's easy to see that within months millions or even billions of nanofactories conceivably could be in operation. A key understanding of MNT is that it leads not just to improved products, but to a vastly improved and accelerated means of production.

13