Berkeley Lab Research Review
 

BEYOND
ALCHEMY
&
THEWright
Brothers

 
     
Nanosecrets of Everyday Things
BY PAUL PREUSS

   
  t's their nanostructure that makes many crucial materials useful, and chemical processes essential to everyday life routinely do their work on the nanoscale. There's a lot more to nanoscience than building itty-bitty widgets.


Nature's robots

For 15 years, ever since K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation launched the nanocraze, the field has been plagued by sci-fi notions of tiny robotic "molecular assemblers" running around shoving atoms together. But as buckyball pioneer Richard Smalley remarks, molecular assemblers have long existed: "We call them catalysts."

Catalysts are "helper" substances that promote chemical reactions without themselves being consumed. Nature's catalysts, enzymes, assemble only specific end products. Industrial catalysts are rarely so precise.

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