Molecular Machinery Gallery

Beware of the stroboscopic illusion!

If molecular machines actually moved as shown in the animations below, they wouldn't work. Don't blame the simulation or the design, though. The problem is that the standard way to render video frames creates a stroboscopic illusion of jerky motion. Atoms typically vibrate hundreds of times per frame, but standard frames capture the position of each atom at a single instant, as if seen by the flash of a stroboscope. This creates the illusion that the atoms all vibrate at the frame rate, which is far too close to the frequency of the machine's moving parts. This gives the false impression that the machine parts are moving at nearly thermal speed, comparable to the speed of sound. At that speed, even if the machine worked, friction would be intolerable.

MarkIII(k) Planetary Gear Description: This is the MarkIII(k), a nanoscale planetary gear designed by K. Eric Drexler. A planetary gear couples an input shaft via a sun gear to an output shaft through a set of planet gears (attached to the output shaft by a planet carrier). The planet gears roll between the sun gear and a ring gear on the inner surface of a casing. This animation was rendered with Qutemol by reading PDB files from a NanoEngineer-1 molecular dynamics simulation. A section of the casing atoms have been hidden to expose the internal gearing assembly. Author: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc.

SRG-Ic Description: This is the SRG-Ic, a parallel-shaft speed reducer gear designed by Mark Sims. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. This assembly includes a pinion gear, an output gear, and a silicon carbide casing which includes a pair of coupled bushings (front and back). The goal of the SRG-I was to create a simple speed reducer gear with as few atoms as possible. Author: Mark Sims Nanorex, Inc.

SRG-II Description: This is the SRG-II. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1 (Alpha 6). The goal of the SRG-II was to create a robust nanoscale gear complete with a casing and extended connector shafts. As you can see, the SRG-II looks every bit like a speed reducer gear. Author: Mark Sims Nanorex, Inc.

SRG-III Description: This is the SRG-III. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. A hybrid of the SRG-I and SRG-II, it is the first molecular gear train ever designed. With 15,342 atoms, the SRG-III is the second largest nanomechanical device ever modeled in atomic detail. Author: Mark Sims Nanorex, Inc.

Drexler-Merkle Differential Gear Description: This is the Drexler-Merkle Differential Gear. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. This molecular differential gear was designed by K. Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle sometime around 1995 while together at Xerox PARC. Authors: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc. Ralph C. Merkle Georgia Tech University

Neon Pump Description: This is the Neon Pump. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. This NanoEngineer-1 molecular dynamics simulation of the neon pump took over 8 hours to complete on a Dell laptop (Pentium M, 2.0GHz and 1GB RAM). Authors: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc. Ralph C. Merkle Georgia Tech University

Small Bearing Description: This is the Small Bearing. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. This small bearing was designed by K. Eric Drexler and can be found on page 298 of his book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation. This MD simulation of the small bearing is perfect for the beginner. It includes two components and only 206 atoms, so the simulator can spit out fun animations like this one quickly. It is a great way to get some experience using rotary motors in NanoEngineer-1 to drive devices. Author: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc.

Strained-shell Sleeve Bearing Description: This is the Strained-shell Sleeve Bearing. It was modeled and simulated entirely using NanoEngineer-1. This is the strained-shell sleeve bearing from Nanosystems (page 296) designed by K. Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle while they were working together at Xerox PARC The model comprises two molecular components; the inner shaft and the outer sleeve and contains a total of 2,808 atoms. With practice, an experienced user can create this bearing in 10-15 minutes. NanoEngineer-1 includes an extrusion tool for creating rods and rings from a molecular fragment (called a chunk in NanoEngineer-1). Author: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc.

Molecular Manufacturing Gallery

DC10c Carbon-transfer Tooltip Description: Damian Allis and Eric Drexler performed density functional theory quantum chemical analyses of the DC10c tooltip as a model system for carbon dimer transfer. This tooltip is featured in the nanofactory movie, “Productive Nanosystems: From molecules to superproducts”, which is available on YouTube and Google Video. Starting at the human scale, the viewer zooms in through a scale factor of a billion to follow molecules as they are sorted, bound, transformed, and joined to form larger and larger parts of a billion-processor laptop computer. The production and much of the animation design was done by John Burch of LizardFire Studios. Authors: Damian G. Allis Department of Chemistry, Syracuse University K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc.

Hydrogen Abstraction Tooltip Description: The key difference between solution-phase chemistry and molecular manufacturing (MM) is the use of the directed positioning of tooltips and workspaces to fabricate or modify nanosystems in MM. Hydrogen abstraction tooltips are structures that can remove single hydrogen atoms from workspaces, thereby generating reactive sites onto which other atoms can be placed. The structure at left shows the product of a hydrogen abstraction process-a single hydrogen atom at the top of a diamondoid tetrahedron. Such processes are explored in section 8.5.4 of the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation . Author: K. Eric Drexler Nanorex, Inc.

Single-atom Deposition Tooltip Description: The ultimate control over the properties of any structure lies in the manipulation of individual atoms. Molecular manufacturing approaches that employ single-atom methods in nanosystem fabrication represent the highest level of design control and assembly flexibility achievable in nanotechnology. Molecular dynamics simulations of complete tooltip assemblies, such as shown at left, are performed to determine the positional accuracy possible with single-atom deposition methods. Author: Damian G. Allis Department of Chemistry, Syracuse University