/sci/ - Science & Math

So here's the deal OP, what you have proposed is a common sci-fi trope. As you have not explained how said nanobots would actually accomplish these things, it
is no different than if you proposed to use magic instead of nanobots. Nothing good comes of discussing 'magical' solutions.

Second, we are way off from building such things. We can't build stuff up atom by atom and our synthetic chemistry isn't good enough to make complex machinery. It is an area of active debate whether we can build things atom by atom. No one has demonstrated this, not even in the lab.

Now that you're discouraged, there have been some interesting developments recently. Synthetic chemists are starting to make simple molecular machines and mechanisms. We've had molecular motors for a while, now people are starting to put them into simple systems.

The next big step appears to be organizing molecular machines into periodic structures. Fibers(1D), sheets(2D), and crystals(3D) are much easier to make than specific 3d structures.

Buckyballs and nanotubes are almost exclusively produced in gram quantities, Metal Organic Frameworks(MOFs), a special class of crystal, are produced in tonnage quantities.

It is definitely worth following recent developments in supramolecular chemistry.

We have almost figured out how to proteins with arbitrary geometry. This is pretty big. We have been able to do this with DNA for a while, only the issue with DNA is that it's very fragile. Proteins are not. DNA has a stiffness of thin gelatin, protein has about the stiffness of fingernails/crab claws/rhino horn.

So what can you do? Artificial intelligence for chemistry/materials science is getting pretty hot.(I work on this) IE searching for materials with specific properties and what not.

Any grad students here want to share their concentration and research? I'd be interested knowing what you guys are doing and discussing some of the projects over the next few days if we can keep the thread bumped. Getting really sick of the rampant shitposting in the other threads. Let's actually talk about some interesting science. Undergrad research welcome too.

My undergrad project was in computational chemistry if anyone is interested in learning about it. I'm just starting grad school for inorganic and materials chemistry. I know there's at least one other anon on this board that's in the same field. What are you all up to?

Hahahaha no. Analytical chemistry barely produces any good research. Oh wow we detected incredibly small amounts of heavy metals in fish, it's so small it's nothing to worry about, but we did it. Literally an Anal. Chem paper. Most Anal. Chem research is just done to keep the field alive and train grads, it's just like why people still analyze shakespeare's work even though they've done so for like 200 years.

You'll never make cool molecules like pic related.

>>7985844
MOFs offer a pretty good way to organize molecular machines spatially. While we probably won't get metal gear solid 'nanomachines' we will get useful devices that have nanoscale moving parts.

I started the MOFs nanomachines meme here on /sci/. I am glad it is spreading.

>>7934054
MOFs are fucking awesome. Pic related is the rotaxane MOF.

The cool thing about it is that it organizes molecular machines in space so we can do cool shit with them.

We might be able to arrange rotaxanes in a MOF such that one switching effects the switching of others. If you get the coupling just right, you can build a chemo-mechanical computer with mole quantities of logic elements*.

*Terms and conditions may apply, logic element does not mean logic gate, computer may be extremely difficult to program

>>7928147
why not both?