Fun With Nanotechnology Advances 75
wieselwerkstatte sent us a link to a Nature article that talks about the possibilty for self-soldering molecular wires. In related news, demon-cw sent us a C't story about .2 buckyballs that they are using to create nanotubes. Use the fish for those who don't speak German.
moderator note (Score:2)
Christ, people, this is totally off topic.
So he's in the nanotech industry (or so he says). What does he want, a cookie!?!
It's getting real (Score:1)
Nano-nanoo (Score:1)
Go fig (Score:1)
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Buckyballs (Score:1)
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
Nanotech industry is gearing up (Score:1)
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
Anyway, this techweb article [techweb.com] tells you how productive Germans are in the open source world. Now it may be true that open source programmers don't make up as much of the slashdot gang as they used to, but there probably still are quite a lot of German slashdot readers.
Re:Some more info... (Score:1)
For your next lesson in using windows, we will teach you how to exit programs
Move the Mouse Pointer to the Box with a cross in it at the top right of the window. While holding the mouse steady, depress the left mouse button and then release it. This will cause the window you were using to disappear. Now pickup the mouse and wrap the cord tightly around your neck. Loop the cord over the top of your chair and then fall off of it. If you have a cordless mouse this will not work, so just swallow the mouse and CHOKE TO DEATH
How many buckyballs? (Score:1)
A molecule of C12?
Heat (Score:1)
for a troll this guy ain't bad (Score:1)
just enough techno-jargon to fool you for a moment- this troll is a bit lame though, apart from the bit where he claims to have traded mail with Linus...
Re:Buckyballs (Score:1)
OT: PrivacyX? (Score:1)
uhm... (Score:1)
E.
tangentially topical (Score:1)
Why do the Slashdot editors invariably refer to it as "the fish"? Do you think it's cool or clever or something, or is there some history that I'm not aware of? I think it would be better to just call it "Babelfish"; alternatively, editors on the dot [slashdot.org] could start using coolbreviations for the soft [microsoft.com], the hoo [yahoo.com], the 5hin [kuro5hin], the hat [redhat.com], etc.
what gives?
So? (Score:1)
Someone break out the beating stick. (Score:1)
'nano-computer' 'by-hand' 'self assembly' 'control'
On a serious note though, did anyone read that last paragraph? If not, I'll summarize - "Well guys, we spent millions in goverment funding, and came up with some pretty cool shizz. The only downside is, uh, it really doesn't have practical application! But hey, who cares, we've got the media giving us attention".
So this is just yet another technology that has about the technological impact on computers that Aibo had on personal pets, and everyones up in arms talking about how now the new revolution in computers is upon us. Yeah, it's great to know, but we've got a LONG way to go before this will have practical application.
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
First i thought i just read another example of Monthy-Python-like-Humour. Then i read your comment again and thought: what a prick!
I wonder how nice it must be to live in a world where everyone refuses to read/buy products/books which originate from a country which, in some time in their history did something wrong to somebody else.
Like japanese people not buying products from the US because of WW2 or most of europe against the french because of napoleon.
My 2 groschen (german equivalent to cent)
Now go on and flame me for beeing a nazi or something, thank you!
Would that be a (Score:1)
Sounds like a fuse to me, which is a slow one-way (ie on->off, permanently) switch.
Does voltage cause heat anyway? Isn't that current? If so, it should all be fine, because the currents should be low anyway at that kind of scale.
Panic over, everybody get back to work.
Re:Would that be a (Score:1)
I believe that resistance causes heat that basically occurs because of the electrical equivelent of friction.
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
The reason most of Europe is against the French is country-specific. The English hate them for their eternal warfare and the rest of us hate them because they hate us. The fact Chirac keeps whining about our drugs-policies might have something to with it as well...:-)
Re:Would that be a (Score:2)
Frankly, I don't want anything like this in my computer, or anything I own. I have enough problems with wires that melt (okay insulation too) when overheated already without having wires that can melt on their own.
Kierthos
I agree (Score:1)
Also add to it the complete overzealous nature of the way the tech world thinks the world will come to the end via nanites will most likely prevent the average person from having any nanities at any price. This would prevent the near utopia level of living that some of these people think would happen if wide spread use of nanites would happen.
Ach, schon wieder ein Kommentar auf Englisch (Score:1)
Wenn Dich darüber ärgerst, daß Du eine Sprache nicht beherrschst, dann lerne sie und hör auf zu jammern.
Re:Heat (Score:2)
As for practical applications:
Umm, if you could reasonably control when the wire would melt, then you could use it to establish/re-establish electrical connections in limited-space areas without neccessarily having to crack open a case. Control the movement of the wire with micro-tools, and you're all set.
It might also be used to speed up mass production of chip-sets. Maybe. This is pretty much all guesswork on my part.
Potential failures:
What happens if it melts or re-melts at the wrong time? It seems to me that right now, this is the last thing in the world that you would want to use on anything you'd like to keep around. What if the wire melts at the wrong time or in the wrong way and establishes the wrong sort of connection? What if it re-melts later and fries something important?
Okay, now no corporation in their right mind is going to use this stuff in their current product lines. One, it's probably more expensive then using normal electrical solder (which I recall being pretty cheap). And two, with the potential failures that I listed (not to mention any other problems that could creep in), they'd be open to lawsuits real quick. And corporations hate lawsuits.
Just my $0.02 on this.
Kierthos
Funny thing about "the fish" (Score:2)
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Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
But what i tried to point out was, that in my point of view its quiet dangerous to "hate" somebody because of prejudice. I mean our friend tyronefine tries to tell me that he's hating every german (or german-speeking) because of what them fucking nazis did in the 3rd Reich.
At the same time he tries to "helping to found an organization to fight against racism in the high-tech arena". Hello? Have you seen a more perfect example of racism on slashdot in the last days then his post??
User info... (Score:1)
Cheers,
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
Yeah, a couple of those. They all disappeared quite quickly as either offtopic or flamebait. Although not at all perfect, the moderation system does take care of these jokers. The fact that my reply to you was a joke should be interpreted as me not taking the original poster seriously at all. Oh and yes, I am from Holland, I do speak German, and I spent the last week with a number of very nice French people.
Re:Nanotech industry is gearing up (Score:2)
While I find all of this nano-buzz interesting, I think people generally attribute too much to it at the current stage in the game. It has enormous potential and it is definately flourishing but I don't think we're close enough to start throwing a big party yet.
Re:Heat (Score:2)
I don't believe that is the point. When they say that the wires are self soldering, they don't mean that the wires melt and then fuse together.
What happens is the two gold "wires" are joined together by a long molecule whose ends preferentially bond to the gold. You can think of it like this, the "solder" is a string that has glue on both ends. You first coat material one with the strings and assume that only one end of the string will stick, the other end of the string now floats up in the air. You then bring the other material close by and the free ends of the string now stick to it. You have essentially bonded (or soldered) the two materials together with the strings. This is what is happening with thiols on gold.
Jeremy
Re:I'm Outraged! (Score:1)
c't translation (non-babelfish) (Score:4)
Michaela Simon 02.11.2000
A carbon tube with a diameter of 4*10^-10m (= 0.4nm)
The Nobel Price 1996 for Chhemistry was awarded for the discovery of a soccer ball - a very small one though. The "Buckyball" only consists of 60 carbon atoms. Its synthesis and detection awarded Robert F. Curl, Harold W. Kroto und Richard E. Smalley the price.
(Download)
The atoms of this molecule are placed exactly like the sextangular leather patches of a soccer ball. With this C60 is another modification of carbon among graphite and diamond. Until now quite a number of carbon spheres of different sizes have been found. The smallest one of this Fullerenes called class of carbon molecules - the C20 - was just recently described in the magazine Nature (2000, 407, S.60-63.).
(picture)
A few years ago there was quite an euphoria about C60 and relatives, and its applications in various areas of science was lively discussed (e.g. superconduction and HIV proteasis inhibition). Even if today anyone can order C60 in chemistry wholesale shops ($500 per gramm) there never was a real technological breakthrough.
The latter is hoped to come with carbon nanotubes - molecules formed like tubes that consist exclusively of carbon (like C60). These tubes were discovered 1991 by the Japanese researcher Sumio Iijima. Nanotube research started as offspring of Fullerene chemistry and is on its best way to surpass it.
(picture)
Carbon nanotubes consist of concentric graphite shells - between one and fifty of them which gives a diameter of 1-50nm. But nanotubes can be up to a millimetre in length - and it is this anisotropy that is of importance for applications. Fibers made of nanotubes are said to have an enormous tensile strength (100times stronger than steel with 1/16th of steel's weight). The interior of these tubes can be filled with various material (e.g. hydrogen) - even chemical reactions are possible within these miniature test-tubes.
Because of teir special electronic properties these tubes could become an important part of future nano technology.
(picture)
In today's issue of Nature two research groups from Hongkong and Japan report independently about the(ir) world smallest nanotube (Nature, 2000, 408, S. 50 und S. 51). It only has a radius of 0.2 nm (nanometers, 2*10^-10m). According to theory scientists this radius is the ultimate as smaller tubes won't be stable any more.
The extreme curvature of the carbon shells creates unusual physical properties: along the axis these tubes a metal-like conductivity is postulated. Further properties of this smallest of all nanotubes have to be researched, but be prepared for suprprise.
Re:So? (Score:1)
I meant Civ, not CivII. You know, the one where your opponents whooped your ass first and asked questiosn later if you accidentally clicked on "Emperor" and "7 Civilizations".
The REAL Truth about Nanotech (Score:3)
1) Make humans immortal (or pretty close to it)
2) Grant humans the use of 'unlimited resources'
3) The ability to learn things much quicker
Do you honestly believe that a military or politician(s) will be able to keep this technology to themselves? That is absolutely impossible, considering the people with the real brains aren't even in the military or the government, and if the government decided to keep the technology for itself, these 'people' would just create a non-commercial nanotechnology which they would release to everyone, in the name of rebellion against a government that never worked properly or efficiently in the first place.
The United States may be eager for Nanotech, but the truth is they are also horrified of it. Why? Here is the truth that the morons in our governent don't want you to know: NANOTECHNOLOGY WILL BRING THE ABSOLUTE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM. Wow, it looks like they have every right to be afraid. No more government - no more money system! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!?
That answer is simple - we are going to become Gods, and there is NO ONE alive or dead who can stop this from happening.
'Death to the pathetic United States, and death to Democracy and Capitalism!! Good riddance!'
Re:penguins (Score:1)
Re:uhm... (Score:3)
That is not what they mean. When they say that the wires are self soldering and that when they ramp the voltage the conductivity drops, they don't mean that the wires melt and then fuse together and remelt and break apart.
What happens is the two gold "wires" are joined together by a long molecule whose ends preferentially bond to the gold. You can think of it like this, the "solder" is a string that has glue on both ends. You first coat material one with the strings and assume that only one end of the string will stick, the other end of the string now floats up in the air. You then bring the other material close by and the free ends of the string now stick to it. You have essentially bonded (or soldered) the two materials together with the strings. This is what is happening with thiols on gold.
Now the thiols only like to conduct one way (like a diode). When they reverse the polarity, the thiols stop conducting. The wires are still soldered together, it's just that they no longer conduct current between them.
Jeremy
Re:How many buckyballs? (Score:2)
How many covalent bonds does it take to get to the chewy center of a Buckyball?
C-C: 1
C=C: 2
CHOMP! Three!
Three.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
Re:Nano-nanoo (Score:1)
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Re:Dis donc! (Score:1)
Re:Dis donc! (Score:1)
Deutsch ist es nur, weil ich das am besten kann und nicht englisch ist.
With nano tubes and buckyballs. . . (Score:2)
The teachers arn't going to like this one bit.
Foreign-language posts on Slashdot (Score:1)
One point that might be worth discussing, though, is if there's some kind of Slashdot policy regarding posts to articles in foreign languages (foreign for most of you, anyway.) Speaking German myself, I don't mind the occasional post of some article in c't magazine [heise.de], one of the best computer magazines in the world. Does this aggravate people with no foreign language competence that much that this sort of post should be entirely forbidden, or should it be encouraged as being a valuable contribution to the inter-cultural communication aspect of the Internet?
Language competency on the Net (Score:1)
In fact, I think language competency is a wonderful thing that should be embraced and encouraged because it is one of the prerequisites of inter-cultural communication that one is able to communicate with others on their ground instead of forcing them to cross over to one's own.
BTW theRe:Heat (Score:1)
Also, is there any evidence that gold is the only substance that this molecule shows preference to? Sure, if it's preferential to chocolate malteds (as an oddball example) there's probably not a lot to worry about. But have they tested this against any or all of the other common materials found in the application set?
I'm sort of playing Devil's Advocate here, but I'd also be really interested if these questions (and answers) have been considered....
Kierthos
Why do you have trouble with this? (Score:1)
How about allowing people to customize their accounts to not being shown non-English stories? If they miss interesting pieces of information, it is probably their own trade-off for the luxury of not being shown them.
Re:Nanotech industry is gearing up (Score:1)
Re:Nanotech industry is gearing up (Score:1)
Is the molecule a switch or... (Score:1)
Wait a minute. You're using an STM, and you're amazed that when you drop the voltage, the current stops? Hello! The current is due to electrons tunnelling through the gap between the tip and the material. If you reduce the voltage, you reduce the energy of the electrons in the tip, and thus the probability that they will tunnel through the gap
Does anyone know if they tried applying a positive voltage of the same magnitude that caused the current to flow? If they haven't yet, I think that they would be *surprised* at the results. If they have, and there was no current, then I respectfully retract my rant.
Explosives (Score:1)
In case the post was an actual question, however, yes, it was carbon. :-)
Re:Nano-nanoo (Score:2)
The breaking strength of an object increases (roughly) as the square of the linear dimension. The mass increases with the cube. If you shake something (or drop it), the stress it experiences is proportional to the mass. Bigger things are generally more fragile than smaller things.
You can drop a small ant from a height of a meter, and the ant will walk away. If you drop an elephant from a meter, the elphant will break bones and end up dead.
Nanotech stuff is likely to be so tough that you couldn't even crush it without a diamond hammer, let alone break it by shaking it.
Also, one of the fun things you can do with (dream) nanotech is to build big things to atomic precision. A one-meter cube of monocrystalline diamond is not a fragile object.
Re:How many buckyballs? (Score:1)
___
And I thought diamonds were a gal's best friend... (Score:1)
I can see it now... geek relationships of the future will forever be changed:
*geekMan*: "Honey, will you marry me?"
*geekChick*: "Oh, darling! A gold-accented iMac, with LinuxPPC, gold-thiol technology, and diamond trim! Of course I'll marry you!"
Re:The REAL Truth about Nanotech (Score:1)
So here I go:
Nanotechnology will not cause the death of capitalism or democracy. Immortality does not negate the need for government.
A large group of people will always need to have a leader, and immortality will just make the groups of people who need to be led larger...
Governments in a nanotech world will likely become more like sheepherders, suggesting where people should go to live and what areas (of the solar system/galaxy/universe) are suitable for the spread of the human race.
Capitalism will thrive. Immortality will not negate greed, and eternity would be boring as hell without new discoveries/inventions.
P.S. As everyone will live forever, it's no big deal to finance someone on their super 3d plasma virtual reality tv for 1000 years.
Re:Heat (Score:2)
There are many factors at play. One of which is the density of thiols on the surface. When you have enough thiols on the surface, they will arrange themselves in a 2-D lattice that is commensurate with the gold lattice (or something close to that). Once they are packed tight enough, they have to point up (actually they tend to lean, but that gets far to complicated and depends on the thiol length and lattice constant).
Another factor is the length of the thiols. If the thiols are short, then they won't want to bend over. If they are very long, they might bend a little. Also the bonding configuration between the atom on the end of the thiol and the gold surface might not allow for the thiol to lean very far.
This is a very active field in Chemistry/Physics/Material Science. There are numerous materials that you can form these self-assembled monolayers on (gold, silver, InP, GaAs, etc...) but gold is probably the most commonly studied surface.
We played with alkanethiols on GaAs for a few months (several years ago) in our lab, but I haven't really been keeping up on the literature.
For a lot more information, do a search for "self-assembled monolayers" on google (or your favorite search engine). This field of research is huge and very interesting.
Jeremy
Re:And I thought diamonds were a gal's best friend (Score:2)
I think what you meant was "Oh, darling! A gold-accented dual 1.2 gHZ Thunderbird, with (Debian/NetBSD/let the holy war begin), gold-thiol technology, and diamond trim! Of course I'll marry you!"
Re:Dis donc! (Score:1)
Arrrggghhh (Score:1)
Re:The REAL Truth about Nanotech (Score:1)
Oh my god, immortality is bad. you can't even die to get rid of your debts.. And yes, I ripped that from Heinlein...
Re:Ugh, another German story. (Score:2)
Instead of whining that you have to use Babelfish, whining that everybody should learn English - why don't YOU learn German? Personally, I speak Dutch, English and German, and a little bit of French - and I wish I hadn't dropped that in higschool...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Re:I'm Outraged! (OK so this is OT too) (Score:1)
I'm curious. Does Babelfish ever get slashdotted when this happens?
Re:How many buckyballs? (Score:1)
Re:The REAL Truth about Nanotech (Score:2)
The fact is, we *are* fast-approaching a semblance of godhood. It's a scary thought, but we already have the technology to completely change the face of our world. The only reason we havn't yet is because there hasn't been motivation large enough to warrant the required resources.
In a few hundred, maybe a few thousand years, in a fairyland of nanotechnology, it could be as simple as programming a nanotechnology-based robot to convert all grass into dust. Just let 'er rip, and off it goes.
This is very frightening, but could also be very valuable.
Who here is willing to spend ten years of constant work to go into space? I mean, if someone walked up to you and said, "If you sacrifice ten years of your life to hard effort, I will send you into space," would you take it?
Probably not. We simply don't have the attention span, as a species. Little things like immortality might give us that attention span. After all, if you've lived several hundred years, what's ten? Heck, what's a hundred? If we're willing to sacrifice that kind of time, our potential is nearly unlimited. We could reach the stars.
Yeah, I know, I sound half-baked. Ah well
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Whats this got to do with my nan? (Score:1)
We need... (Score:1)
Sorry, folks, couldn't resist.
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Re:Foreign-language posts on Slashdot (Score:1)
I wouldn't mind anything in German, but also would agree to see the occasional article in any other language. Maybe I get motivated to learn it, and almost any reason to learn a language is a good one.
(I'm currently learning svenska because my favorite movie is from Sverige and I want to understand it undubbed.)
Anyway, most Articles from Heise get karmawhored very quickly. This one is no exception.
Hey, that's my kind of computer! (Score:1)
Darned Immortality (Score:1)
So much for lifetime retirement by the time I'm 60....
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Re:And I thought diamonds were a gal's best friend (Score:1)
~Di
I love Mattel and their Cybermoron software (Score:1)
Hee hee. (Score:1)
Re:Nano-nanoo (Score:1)
And as far as the breaking strength business goes, pressure is a force over an area. No matter the size of the metal, you're going to have similar properties between large and small wires. Therefore, if you exert enough force on a small enough area, you could break it, but a jostle won't kill you.
New meaning of nanotechnology. (Score:1)
Armageddon sick of it... (Score:2)
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