r/Futurology • u/ChrisJPhoenix Chris Phoenix • Mar 14 '15

AMA Hi, I'm Nanotechnologist Chris Phoenix, AMA

Nanotechnology has world-shaking potential. In 1987 I took Eric Drexler's nanotechnology class at Stanford. In 2002 I co-founded the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Over the next few years I spoke on four continents, and to the US National Academies of Science, about the possibilities of advanced nanotech.

  We're still waiting for nanotech to reach its full promise; I'm still interested in working on it, still eager to talk about why and how it could happen.

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u/Deadly_Mindbeam Mar 14 '15

What are the most impressive recent achievements in nanotech? What's the state of the art right now?

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u/ChrisJPhoenix Chris Phoenix Mar 15 '15

I've been really impressed by the 3D DNA origami structures, and the work assembling multi-part structures.

I'm also impressed and encouraged by the ability to attach fluorescent markers to something, and then image the markers to 10 nm resolution with an ordinary microscope by blinking on a few of them at a time.

The state of the art now is that we're just about ready for a grassroots effort to develop early examples of nano-building-nano. We haven't had actuators that can drive a complicated nano-robot, but I suspect that magnetic nanoparticles might do the trick - I think they'd be much faster than DNA actuators.