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Medical nanorobots and their development
Ralph C. Merkle
Senior Fellow IMM
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Goal: Make nanofactories to make medical nanorobots to keep us alive and healthy.
Web pageswww.MolecularAssembler.com/Nanofactory/
www.nanomedicine.com
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Health, wealth and atoms
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Experimental tools
“…successive substitution of Sn atoms at the surface one atom at a time with Si atoms coming from the tip.”Science 17 October 2008: vol. 322. no. 5900, pp. 413 – 417. Custance Nanomechanics Group.
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Theoretical tools tips
HAbst HDon GM Germylene Methylene
HTrans AdamRad DimerP GeRad
A Minimal Toolset for Positional Diamond MechanosynthesisJournal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience Vol.5, 760–861, 2008 by Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle
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Tool properties
Starting from small feedstock molecules, a set of tools can:
make another set of toolsrecharge all toolsmake nanorobotic devices
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Hydrocarbon bearing
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Planetary gear
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Positional assembly
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• Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level
• Today’s surgical tools are huge and imprecise in comparison
Impact
Nanomedicine
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• In the future, we will have fleets of surgical tools that are molecular both in size and precision.
• We will also have computers much smaller than a single cell to guide those tools.
Impact
Nanomedicine
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Mitochondrion~1-2 by 0.1-0.5 microns
Size of a robotic arm~100 nanometers
Scale
8-bit computer
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Mitochondrion
Scale
Robotic arm
“Typical” cell: ~20 microns
.
Respirocyte
Microbivore
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Supply oxygen
Exploratory Design in Medical Nanotechnology: A Mechanical Artificial Red Cell
Artificial Cells, Blood Substitutes, and Immobil. Biotech. 26(1998):411-430,
by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
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Microbivores: Artificial Mechanical Phagocytes using Digest and Discharge Protocol
J. Evol. Technol. 14(April 2005):55-106
by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
Digest bacteria
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The Ideal Gene Delivery Vector: Chromallocytes, Cell Repair Nanorobots for Chromosome Replacement Therapy
J. Evol. Technol. 16(June 2007):1-97
by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
Replace chromosomes
2008 E-spaces and Robert A. Freitas Jr.
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Medical nanorobots can keep you alive
Nanofactories can manufacture
medical nanorobots
How do we build a nanofactory?
We have a plan
How Do We Get There From Here?
A strategy
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Our approach
Backward chaining (Eric Drexler)
Horizon mission methodology (John Anderson)
Retrosynthetic analysis (Elias J. Corey)
Shortest path and other search algorithms in computer science
“Meet in the middle” attacks in cryptography
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Core molecularmanufacturingcapabilities
Today
MemoryProducts
Products
Products
Products
Products
ProductsProductsNanorobots
Products
Products
ProductsProducts
Solar cells
Products
Products
Medicalnanodevices
Products
Products Molecularcomputers
Products
ProductsThe direct route
Focused nanofactory effort
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Core molecularmanufacturingcapabilities
MemoryProducts
Products
Products
Products
Products
Products
ProductsProductsNanorobots
Products
Products
ProductsProducts
Solar cells
Products
Products
MedicalnanodevicesProducts
Products Molecularcomputers
Products
ProductsThe winding path
Business as usual
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An exponential trend
Is easy to accelerate when it’s small
But hard to accelerate after it’s gotten big
Why invest?
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Price tag: ~$1,000,000 for the first two years
Doubling every two years thereafter
~$1,000,000,000 over 20 years
Why invest?
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End of talk
END OF TALK
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H abstraction
Hydrogen abstraction from adamantane.-1.59 eV
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H donation
Hydrogen donation onto an adamantane radical.-0.60 eV
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C placement
C placement on C(111) using GM toolC radical addition to C radical -3.17 eVGeRad removal +2.76 eV (note Ge-C bond is “soft”)HDon hydrogenate C radical -0.70 eV
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Summary
•9 tools•100% process closure•Feedstock: C2H4, GeH4
•65 reaction sequences•328 reaction steps•102,188 CPU-hours (1-GHz CPUs)
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• Today: potatoes, lumber, wheat, etc. are all about a dollar per kilogram.
• Tomorrow: almost any product will be about a dollar per kilogram or less. (Design costs, licensing costs, etc. not included)
Replication
Manufacturing costsper kilogramwill be low
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The impactof a new manufacturing technologydepends on what you make
Impact
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• We’ll have more computing power in the volume of a sugar cube than the sum total of all the computer power that exists in the world today
• More than 1021 bits in the same volume• Almost a billion Pentiums in parallel
Powerful Computers
Impact
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• New, inexpensive materials with a strength-to-weight ratio over 50 times that of steel
• Critical for aerospace: airplanes, rockets, satellites…
• Useful in cars, trucks, ships, ...
Lighter, stronger,smarter, less expensive
Impact
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• Nanosensors, nanoscale scanning
• Power (fuel cells, other methods)
• Communication
• Navigation (location within the body)
• Manipulation and locomotion
• Computation
• http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine
• By Robert Freitas,
Nanomedicine Volume I
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• Today, loss of cell function results in cellular deterioration:
function must be preserved
• With medical nanodevices, passive structures can be repaired:
structure must be preserved
A revolution in medicine
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Liquid nitrogen
Time
Tem
pera
ture
Cryonics
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It works It doesn't
Experimental groupwww.alcor.org
A very long andhealthy life
Die, lose lifeinsurance
Control group Die
Die
Payoff matrix
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Annotated bibliography on diamond mechanosynthesis
http://www.molecularassembler.com/
Nanofactory/AnnBibDMS.htm
Molecular tools
(over 50 entries)
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