Meeting: MIT NSG
Tuesday Jan 2
7:30 pm
NE43-773
Clippings and pizza
Literature alert:
The question of how nanodevices might be powered has attracted much interest. Those curious about the question should not miss the article "Elastic Biomolecular Machines" in the January _Scientific American_. The author is Dan W. Urry, a biochemist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Urry's research interest is using simple polymers to convert chemical, electrical, photonic, and thermal energy differences into motion. He has had particular success in synthesizing polyers that in aqueous solutions convert heat differences into work. (At low temperatures the ambient water forms a complex of pentagons that braces the molecule and holds it open; when the temperature rises the structure collapses, allowing the polymer to fold.) The exact transition temperature is highly sensitive to details of the chemical environment. Any force -- electrical, chemical, hydrostatic, photonic -- that modifies this environment modifies the transition temperature and can therefore stimulate contraction as well. This principle has allowed him to convert all the mentioned forces into motion, directly and indirectly.
Urry speculates about several applications of his "inverse temperature transition mechanism" . A nanotechnologist will have no trouble thinking of several more. These are potent little motors. Urry writes that some polymers can lift 1000x their dry weight and no doubt still stronger ones will be found.
I append a list of webbable nanotech resources. Compiled by Ralph Merkle.
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/merkle/merklesHomePage.html
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/nano/nano.html
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/nano/reversible.html
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/nano/feynmanPrize.html
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/nano/nano4.html
http://www.portal.com/~carols/mass.html
http://planchet.rutgers.edu
ftp://ftp.cs.rmit.oz.au/pub/rmit/nano
http://www.watson.ibm.com/journal/rd.html
http://planchet.rutgers.edu/updates.html
http://www.ioppublishing.com
http://www.gpl.net/mmsg/mmsg.html
http://nanothinc.com/
http://www.wired.com/Etext/1.6/features/nanotech.html