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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)