Foresight Update 27
Page 1
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Nanotechnologist
Wins Nobel Prize in
 Chemistry for Discovering
Fullerenes
By Lew Phelps
Nanotechnologist Richard
E. Smalley of Rice University has been awarded the 1996 Nobel
Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of buckminsterfullerenes,
the complex molecular forms of carbon that resemble geodesic
domes designed by architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Named in
Fuller's honor, the molecules are commonly called
"buckyballs." Fullerenes are formed when vaporized
carbon condenses in an atmosphere of inert gas.
The gaseous carbon is obtained, among other means, by directing
an intense pulse of laser light at a carbon surface. The released
carbon atoms are mixed with a stream of helium gas and combine to
form clusters of some few up to hundreds of atoms. The gas is
then led into a vacuum chamber where it expands and is cooled to
some degrees above absolute zero. The carbon clusters can then be
analyzed with mass spectrometry.
 While
focusing his research on fullerenes and related carbon molecular
structures, Smalley has become recognized as a leading researcher
in molecularly precise structures. He heads the recently formed Center for Nanoscale Science and
Technology (CNST) at Rice (described in Update
17).
Smalley spoke at the Foresight
Institute's 1995 Nanotechnology Conference, describing the
current status of nanotechnology research at Rice. He is
scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the 1997
Conference. Also, Update
18 reprinted an interview of Dr. Smalley from the Rice
News, Nov. 11, 1993, in which he said, "The idea behind
nanotechnology is ultimately, and maybe sometime very soon, to
custom design the materials around us atom by atom, much like an
architect designs a building. Except now the building materials
will be atoms rather than bricks or steel beams. When you design
a building, you don't just throw a bunch of stuff down and hope
that you get lucky. You design it so the economy, function and
beauty is all completely crafted. It is an artificial object that
may be artistic, but is also built to have certain functions. The
idea of nanotechnology is to learn how to do this on the atomic
scale."
In the interview, Smalley also spoke of the importance of
computer modeling to nanotechnology. "Much like when you
build a bridge. Before you actually construct it, you take this
very carefully worked-out design and you submit it to computer
calculations to make sure it won't fall down. In the same sense,
when we actually get to the point that we start building things
on the nanometer scale, we'll have to be able to predict their
performance. We will have to describe this object that we're
going to build somehow to a computer. And to be able to have that
computer chew on the problem and ultimately tell us how it's
going to work...We still have a long way to go in calculating the
behavior of atoms when they stick together in various
structures... However, a lot of progress has been made, an
amazing amount, in the past 30 years. And we're getting
close."
Today research at Rice's CNST is focused upon a major transition
away from the study of fullerene clusters levitated in the gas
phase. "The new direction insists that the objects of study
survive when exposed to the real world while remaining well
defined on the nanometer scale. The object is to develop
nanoscale structures and probes for such structures," the
CNST Web site
declares.
Speaking before the Houston section of the American Society of
Chemical Engineers in January 1996, Smalley said,
"we are beginning to realize that we can find ways of
tricking nature into self assembling carbon into other
fullerene-like shapes as well, and that these new materials may
well have major practical as well as theoretical significance. In
fact, it emerges that buckyball was ( and is) a sort of Rosetta
Stone of what we now realize is an infinity of new structures
made of carbon one way or another."
One example of the new
direction of Smalley's research is the nanowire - a truly
metallic electrical conductor only a few nanometers in diameter,
but hundreds of microns (and ultimately meters) in length. The
objective of Smalley's research group is to "learn how to
produce such wires by, effectively, polymerizing carbon into a
continuous perfect graphene tube - a giant single fullerene
molecule. With dopant metal atoms sealed inside, these fullerene
nanowires are expected to have an electrical conductivity similar
to copper's, a thermal conductivity about as high as diamond, and
a tensile strength about 100 times higher than steel.
"In addition to their wonderful bulk properties, these
nanowires will be terrific as tiny probes. Bundles long enough to
hold in one's hand, but arranged along their length in a
nanoscale array, will provide a direct connection between the
macroscopic and nanoscopic worlds."
A fullerene (C70)
Smalley has posted on the World Wide Web an article published
in Nature magazine describing use of carbon nanotubes as
the tip for Scanning Force microscopes (SFMs) and Scanning
Tunneling Microscopes (STMs). "Ideally this tip should be of
at least the same molecular precision as the nanoscale object to
be probed, and it should maintain this perfection reliably in
day-to-day practical use not only under high vacuum but also in
air and when probing under water," the article says.
"Although the best of the currently available tips [for SFM
or STM] do at times achieve sub-nanometer resolution, they seldom
survive a direct 'tip crash' with the surface, and it is rarely
clear just what the atomic configuration of the tip actually is
when the image is taken. Carbon nanotubes, particularly those
which are effectively fullerenes of macroscopic length in one
dimension but still intrinsically nanoscopic with molecular
perfection in the other two dimensions, may offer the ultimate
solution to this tip problem." Smalley's article reports
initial successes in using individual carbon nanotubes several
microns in length as probe tips in SFM and STM.
Smalley and colleagues also are pursuing research related to
carbon nanotubes as novel nanoscale materials and device
structures. "Defect-free nanotubes that are essentially
giant, linear fullerenes are expected to have spectacular
mechanical properties, as well as electronic and magnetic
properties which are in principle tunable by varying the
diameter, number of concentric shells and chirality. Further
progress toward practical materials will require eliminating
defects and other reaction products (such as amorphous carbon and
catalyst particles), maximizing the nanotube yield, and synthetic
control of tube diameter, length, chirality, and number of
concentric shells," he writes.
Smalley has vigorously advanced his view that nanotechnology must
be achieved to support the planet's rapidly growing population.
For example, in a speech
delivered in late 1995 to the Board of Trustees of the
University of Dallas, Smalley concluded, "We've got to learn
how to build machines, materials, and devices with the ultimate
finesse that life has always used: atom by atom, on the same
nanometer scale as the machinery in living cells. But now we've
got to learn how to extend this now to the dry world. We need to
develop nanotechnology both on the wet and dry sides. We need it
urgently to get through these next 50 years. It will be a
challenge. But, I am confident we will succeed."
For more information on Smalley's Web site,
see WebWatch on page 11.
Foresight.Ten_Years/Progress_Great/More_Coming
By Lew Phelps
The headline is a pseudo-World Wide Web address (URL), but its
content is valid. As Foresight Institute celebrates the Tenth
Anniversary of both the organization and the initial publication
of Eric Drexler's Engines of
Creation, more has been achieved than most
participants dared to hope a decade ago.
"Many of the things I wrote about in Engines have
come to pass much faster than anyone thought possible,"
Drexler said at a special Foresight Tenth Anniversary Dinner in
Palo Alto October 19. "Protein engineering is now
commonplace. High school students are assembling devices in their
basements that can manipulate individual atoms. Computational
nanotechnology -- the study of molecular nanotechnology
design concepts using computer modeling--has become feasible
through the development of better and cheaper software that runs
on faster and cheaper platforms."
Another key goal of Foresight is nearing realization with
significant progress in the Web
Enhancement Project, Drexler said. The goal, espoused
originally in Engines, is a fully developed hypertext
system that would allow people to insert linked comments into
documents on the World Wide Web (or similar medium). Such
"back linking" capability will facilitate the debate
that will be necessary to prepare the world for the consequences
of nanotechnology.
Several proposals have been made over the years, including the Xanadu Project and
the Hyper-G Project
initiated in 1989 by Hermann Maurer at Graz University of
Technology, Austria. The latter concept has now reached
commercialization with the advent of Hyperwave, a new server
software product that offers flexible advanced hypertext
capabilities while maintaining full compatibility with existing
Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet
Explorer. Foresight is establishing a Hyperwave site to test and
demonstrate the software's ability to facilitate scientific
debate. (See details in next
article.)
At the dinner, Eric Drexler presented commemorative awards to the
Foresight Senior Associates
who have donated or pledged at the "Friends" level of
$5000 per year or more to the Foresight general fund:
- Chris Portman, a strong supporter of Foresight and one of
the first Senior Associates from England,
- Steve Vetter of Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises,
Inc., who first suggested that Foresight initiate a
Senior Associates Program, and
- Jim Von Ehr of Macromedia, a technology entrepreneur who
first came to Foresight through reading Nanosystems.
Additional awards will be given out at the larger Foresight Conference in
1997 to major donors to the Feynman
Grand Prize, including Marc Arnold and Jim Von Ehr.
Photos from Foresight Tenth Anniversary Dinner
Supportors of Foresight Institue at 10th Anniversary
Celebration
Foresight Institute Founders, Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson,
are honored at the 10th Anniversary Celebration
Eric Drexler (center) congratulating "Friends of Foresight
Award"
recipients Christopher Portman (left), James Von Ehr (center) and
Steve Vetter (right)
From Foresight Update 27, originally
published 30 December 96.
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