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Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life
From the Publisher: Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information with unparalleled power and precision. But is their vision realistic? Where is the science heading? As nanotechnology (a new technology that many believe will transform society in the...
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Oxford University Press
2004
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Table of Contents:
- 1: Fantastic Voyages
- New industrial revolution?
- Radical vision of nanotechnology
- Nano everywhere
- Into the nanoworld
- 2: Looking At The Nanoworld
- Light microscopy
- Seeing a single (big) molecule
- Other types of waves
- Electron microscope
- Imaging versus scattering
- Scanning probe microscopy
- Living in the nanoworld
- 3: Nanofabrication
- Introduction
- Transistor
- Making integrated circuits
- Moore's law and beyond
- Direct writing
- Cheaper, smaller, more curved-soft lithography
- Making things beside chips-MEMS and NEMS
- 4: Brownian Universe: Physics At The Nanoscale
- Introduction
- Fluid mechanics
- Flying nanobots?
- Brownian motion
- Stickiness
- Mechanical properties of small things
- Quantum effects
- Fantastic voyage revisited
- 5: Making Soft Machines
- Self-assembly
- Order from disorder
- Soap
- From shoe soles to opals
- Self-assembly and life
- Protein folding
- Nucleic acids
- Living soft machines
- Beyond simple self-assembly
- How molecules evolve
- Copying nature
- 6: Machines And Mechanisms
- Introduction
- Prime movers-engines large and small
- Mechanisms and machines
- Sensors and transducers
- 7: Wetware: Chemical Computing From Bacteria To Brains
- Introduction-Galvani and the chemical computer
- Reflex, instinct, and intelligence
- How E. Coli responds to its environment
- Principles of chemical computing
- Social life of cells
- Why big animals needed to develop a longer-ranged signaling mechanism
- Nervous energy
- How brains are different from computers
- 8: Single-Molecule Electronics
- Green goo catastrophe
- Dyes and photosynthesis
- Clean power for all-non-conventional photovoltaics
- Organic metals and plastic semiconductors
- Roll-up television screens and paint-on lasers
- Plastic logic
- Ups and downs of molecular electronics
- Single molecules as electronic devices
- Integrating single-molecule electronics
- 9: Our Nanotechnological Future
- Which way for nanotechnology?
- What should we worry about?
- Further reading
- Index.