NanoGuy: Some details

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Some details

Not finished with this yet and I don't have time right now to find the links supporting this design. Plus I've also got a diagram displaying the folding process for penta- and hexa- graphitic ring origami coming. But I promised Michael Anissimov a graphic explaining an earlier post so here's what I have so far. Nothing is to scale and a few details are missing but it should still explain much. Stay tuned:

Click to view large

Update (1:36pm):
here's a link to using oligonucleotides on AFM tips.

3 Comments:

At 3:05 PM, Michael Anissimov said...: Thanks, this is helpful. It all sounds plausible to me except I am curious about the possible complexity of the last part: "origami-like modeling". Is there any precedent for origami-like modeling of complex structures out of inorganic materials like graphite? Or would this be doing it for the first time?

Also, what do you think of the "tattoo" and "silkscreen" MNT ideas here? Does this design here offer any superior features, or is it just another possible approach? I'm seeing some similarities between your proposed approach and the silkscreen approach.

Thanks for sharing your expertise and ideas.
At 4:23 PM, Guy said...: Asides from the fact that all fullerenes and carbon nanotubes are examples of graphitic folding there are a couple of documents detailing a host of graphene structures that spontaneously fold. Should I find the time I'll dig up those links and post them here. As far as the modeling goes, there are tons of examples of this sort of design. Tiling with 5 and 6 sided structures to produce 3d structures goes back to Buckminster Fuller after all.

The tattoo and silkscreen approaches are only abstractly similar. They employ different chemistry and supramolecular structures. I'm picturing applying well known click-chemistry and polymer structures that are tailorable down to the single atom level. Their positioning is constrained by the tip location and grid derived from the substrate's surface structure.

The article you linked to doesn't describe any actual chemistry being involved. The polymer precursors for the process I'm picturing are well understood pentyl and penol rings complexes (see the earlier article's links)
At 7:58 PM, Michael Anissimov said...: Thanks for your answer. I hope to include your idea in a blog post on MNT approaches. Looking forward to more info on the folding procedure.