Nanomachines are machines of dimensions in the
range of nanometers. They include micro scale replicas of present day machines
like the nanogears,nanoarms or the nanorobots as well as futuristic machines
which have no present day analogs, like the assembler which can assemble atoms
to produce further machines or assembler themselves.
Though
there can be analogous of today’s mechanical components, the way in which both
these categories are manufactured will be entirely in contrast to each other
with regard to what we an call as the direction of manufacturing While today’s
machines are manufactured by the top-bottom approach in which they are machined
down from larger components or bulk of the component materials , nanomachines
will be manufactured by the bottom-top approach where they are built atom by
atom, placing the individual atoms precisely at the required positions.
No
nanomachines in the true sense have yet been manufactured, although feasibility
of producing several of them is confirmed by various means. The main difficulty
lies in the inability of today’s handling facilities to account for
manipulating such sub atomic particles. Producing them by means of chemical
reactions is the most apt one for controlling atomic positions. Scientists have
been able to obtain virtual machines by means of computer simulated chemical
reactions and this proves their feasibility. The distance from actually making
them will be bridged by finding way to control and predict the outcome of
chemical reactions more quickly and precisely.
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