From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Mon May 26 2003 - 00:43:38 MDT
Party of Citizens wrote:
> >
> > > What is there about so-called carbon nanotubes which links them to
> > > nanotechnology any more than any other molecule?
.
> It is a sincere question. Every molecule could be called nano-whatever. Is
> there any special reason carbon nanotubes get that label? We don't refer
> to nano-rna for example.
There are plenty of others who could answer this better than me,
but I'll take a crack and let them inform both of us.
Carbon-nanotubes do not occur naturally there are structures that
have been manufactured. Indeed they are amongst the first
manufactured nanostructures with properties that might hold
promise as elements in a variety of nanomachines or applications.
Nanotubes can conduct electricity. They are hollow and might
potentially be used as containers to deliver very small amounts of dna.
I attended a Nanoparticles in biology conference early this year in which
a woman from the CSIRO (Australia) was talking about their early plans
to use carbon nanotubes as wires between fixed gold points on circuit
boards (gold can also be drawn very fine) and so make small circuits.
The interesting thing was that they were considering holding the pieces
together ie binding the nanotubes to the gold with DNA using
dna and complementary dna molecules. They were going to have the
circuits self assemble in solution.
Sometime, when I get more time, I'll see if I can chase down the sources
of the above, though they are quite likely not in the journals yet.
Bottom line though is that nanotubes are *manufactured* and they
have some particularly *useful* properties that (at least potentially)
suggest that they will be amongst the first components used in
anyset of components in nano assembly work.
This answer is crude and all more knowledge extropes should please
feel free to refine it.
Regards,
Brett
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