Recent research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) using MEMS devices to move atoms instead of employing atomic force microscopes (AFMs) as mentioned in the article has opened up the possibility for a new tool in nanomanipulation. Radical nanotechnology proponents are heralding it as an enabling technology for molecular manufacturing.
One of the knocks on STM and AFM nanomanipulation, at least in terms of it being “protypical mechanosynthesis”, is that the manipulation does not involve “reactive (and re-chargeable) molecular tools”.
Jason Gorman of the Intelligent Systems Division at NIST, who will publish the research in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Nanomanufacturing, has taken a different approach to the typical use of AFMs for nanomanipulation and the result could pass the "reactive and rechargeable molecular tool" test.
Gorman and his colleagues at NIST have developed a system that is described in the article announcing the research as “four MEMS devices positioned around a centrally located port on a chip into which the starting materials can be placed. Each nanomanipulator is composed of a positioning mechanism with an attached nanoprobe. By simultaneously controlling the position of each of these nanoprobes, the team can use them to cooperatively assemble a complex structure on a very small scale.”
Whether or not the MEMs-device system fits into a definition of mechanosynthesis or not, it appears that the technology could overcome some of the difficulties faced with top-down nanomanipulation using AFMs, such as nanoparticles sticking together during manipulation making them impossible to be lifted from the substrate.
The result could be nanoassembly systems that could be made for around $400 per chip, making them thousands of times cheaper than macro-scale systems such as the AFM.
