Exploring the potential of nanoarchitectonics

In a lecture at the American Physical Society in 1959 titled ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’, Richard Feynman argued that huge possibilities come from working in the world of molecules and atoms. He dreamed of ultra-small computers, cars running under a microscope, and medical machines working in our body.

These dreams are now coming true. In 2017, we had the 1st World Nanocar Race at Toulouse in France. Six teams from around the world manipulated nanometre-size cars to run on a metal surface under a scanning tunnelling microscope. A nanocar is 2,000,000,000 times smaller than usual car, corresponding to the size difference between a rice grain and the Earth. Feynman only imagined cars 4000 times smaller than a normal car. However, few of the nanocars resembled cars, and none were powered by their own motors. There’s still plenty of room for improvement.

The next step in nanotechnology is to develop nanoscale objects into functional materials. For this, we need nanoarchitectonics – a concept proposed by Masakazu Aono at an international conference in Tsukuba, Japan in 2000. The term nanoarchitectonics refers to the discipline (‘nics’) of architecture in the nano-scale. The aim is to architect materials with precise structures, designed to give high levels of performance, from nanoscale units such as atoms, molecules and nanomaterials. It is a nanoscale-version of building construction or machine manufacturing.