From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Aug 18 1999 - 11:16:00 MDT
I have to get out of bed really early in the morning
to scoop something before Nanogirl gets to it...
So I thought I'd offer up a tidbit or two
from this week's Science:
"Controlling Molecular Self-Organization: Formation of
Nanometer-Scale Spheres and Tubules"
G. William Orr, Leonard J. Barbour, Jerry L. Atwood
If you have a Science OnLine subscription the abstract
is: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/285/5430/1049
The key points are:
1) They can construct both spheres & tubes
2) The construction is done by self-organization
3) The construction of the spheres/tubes is controlled
by varying the reactant concentrations.
4) The work is done by 3 people in a chemistry lab.
The materials aren't going to be as strong as buckyballs/tubes
because the bonds between the subunits aren't covalent but
it points out how clever the chemists are getting. Looking
at the pictures, what keeps going through my mind is that
we are on the path towards NanoLegos.
Also in the issue are a good discussion of the super-iron
batteries, pointing out that we may be able to improve battery
density quite a bit, Josephson Persistent-Current Qubits
(for you QC folks), and a discussion about how Human Genome
Sciences is moving from a genome company into a drug company.
Robert
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