ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

204 NanoTechnology
Figure 10.13: Nanoscale view of STM nanomilling/nanolithography. By Paul
Jablonka (Schneiker and Hameroff, 1987).
In addition to the above modifications, STM/FMs or their tips could be
augmented with a wide variety of sensors and transducers; the atomic force
microscope of Binnig, Quate and Gerber (1986) is an excellent example. The
augmentation of STM/FMs with fiber optic interferometers (or comparable
techniques) could provide extremely accurate realtime calibration of absolute and
relative STM/FM tip positioning, thus overcoming the problems of electrical
noise, creep, ageing and hysteresis inherent in present STM piezo-positioning
systems. The technique given in Dietrich, Lanz and Moore (1984) for making tips
with uniform tip-to-base conical profiles would be useful for STM/FMs using
closely spaced multiple tips. Schneiker conjectures that properly configured and
instrumented sets of STM/FMs can operate as machine tools with effectively
perfect lead screws and bearings. STM/FMs also can be used as sub-atomic
resolution proximity detectors and coordinate measuring machines on conducting
surfaces (AFMs would be used for insulators) to monitor nearly perfect
superaccurate nanomachining operations (limited by the graininess of atoms and
other materials science considerations). Many useful macroscopic mechanical
structures and mechanisms may thus be duplicated at the submicron level, and
many of these mechanisms may require no lubrication due to force/area scaling
and very rapid heat dissipation (Feynman, 1961). For even smaller mechanisms, a
switch to Feynman’s mechanical chemistry approach would be needed to build up
molecular devices in a series of joining and trimming operations. Many presently
existing synthetic molecules could be utilized as building blocks; the molecular
gear and bearing system of Yamamoto (1985) provides an interesting example
and is thought to be capable of rotating about a billion times a second.
STM/FMs may execute many complex mechanical motions for driving such
nanomechanisms (Schneiker, 1986). For instance, an essentially infinite series of
three dimensional tip motions (single straight lines, circles, spirals, helices, etc.)
can be made at speeds presently limited mainly by mechanical resonances in the