Nano Future 2030

Looking around at the state of commercial nano, I’d say it is just getting started. Some of us don’t really ascribe to the idea that using small particle materials is true nanotechnology, but that is the practical definition at the moment. True nanotech is building things from atoms and molecules – not from particles made up of millions of atoms in each particle.

So when do we see open source nano? When the tools become cheap enough or available to individuals. Not there yet. But I’d like to think that good things can come from open source nano. There are certainly many software applications that are open source. Blender 3D, the free animation software I use, is a great example. The primary attribute of an open source product is that it can be reproduced at little or no cost. Nano is the only potential hardware technology where that may one day be true as it is with software.

Also, you get a different set of goals from open source than you get from entrepreneur driven commercial development. The entrepreneur seeks to please the mainstream. Open source tries to deliver something better than, or cheaper than, what is available to the mainstream for a price. You get idealism, in a good way, from open source. And that is what I hope for in nano. Who else would create a food machine and give it away to hungry people? Who else would put tremendous creative effort into a project just to give it away for the good of the world? That’s what you get with nano, the ability to build a device that can extrude rice as well as a copy of itself. And yes, that will be done safely although it is a very difficult job.

Open source nano gives power to the people, it frees them from the rat race. It distributes power rather than concentrating it in a few individuals who may or may not have our interests at heart.

Will it happen? Yes, but maybe not soon. The only obstacle is fear. Putting the power to design anything into the hands of any individual guarantees you will get both good and evil results. Humans are both or they produce both, so they will produce good nano and evil nano. Do we forgo the good because we fear the evil? I hope not. Can good nano protect us from evil nano? It better and it can’t if the good is restricted in a “drug war” against nano. So, don’t EVER hide your head in the sand and try to suppress nano-research. Fight to improve it and be ready to take the bad with the good.

I’m starting a series of articles and design projects on open source nano. If you have ideas you are willing to contribute, I welcome your comments. My first project is a nano-lab on a silicon chip. I’ll put the animations here as they are produced.

Hydrogen Storage

We need to use Hydrogen for energy, but it is hard to store or transport safely. This “invention” is a modification of one I did a few years back. It stores gaseous hydrogen in tiny balls that retain the gas under high pressure and release it on command ( applied external magnetic field).

I’m putting this into the public domain so that anyone can build it and use it. The idea is to create billions of tiny balls that flow in large numbers like fluid. They can be pumped, measured like water, stored in any container, used in cars safely, etc. You could probably drink the stuff as long as you stayed away from strong magnets.

The balls are around 1 mm in diameter. Of course with nanotechnology, they could be much smaller and have automated construction, but for the moment, lets use something large enough to see.


Outside, each ball is a perfect sphere of diamond (carbon) with one hole that allows gas to enter or exit. The hole is covered with a guard or screen to filter out dust and lint. Inside the ball, there is one moving part – a spring loaded lever that contains a flexible plug for the hole and a small disk of magnetic material (iron). Another bit of magnetic material is supported by a column so that there is small gap between the two magnetic disks. When an external magnetic field is applied to a ball, the two magnetic bits are attracted to one another, the lever bends and the plug is withdrawn from the hole. Gas escapes if the outside pressure is low. The ball is charged with gas if the outside pressure is high. Without a magnetic field, the plug seals the hole and gas is retained inside the ball.

This is a concept image of the ball.

Click the images to see a larger image.

I love Sci-fi, but as I get older I know what I like and most commercial fiction doesn’t cut it. I suspect I was more flexible in my younger years, but again, maybe the authors were just a bit better. I love William Gibson, Greg Bear and Walter Jon Williams. But I usually like their earlier stuff better than the latest experimental things that come after the writer’s peak.

I wonder if nanotechnology will turn out anything like our early technical imaginings of the future. The nanofactory animation I did for Dr Drexler is a good example of one idea that serves as a springboard but will never be built exactly as depicted.

If we were to skip ahead twenty years, what would we see? Assuming the world limps along at least as well as today ( no disasters that set us back or inhibit nano development ) would we see readily available products?

Yes, just as we have “nano” products today (primarily material science based on small particles) we will have products based on whatever works at the time and can be implemented at a cost that is expected to be profitable.

Since material science nano is here now, in twenty years the first nano assembly factory should be in operation in several countries. It will be able to carefully assemble small parts into functional devices. The small parts will be assembled by self assembly and by very slow manual assembly. These parts will be more costly than gold or platinum. Computers will run the assemblers and much effort will be put into the software that is able to run the microfactory, transport the parts, orient and assemble the atoms into structures and transport the results into transportation packages suitable for distribution of the resulting devices to other labs or other assembly stations.

Although these first products of nano assembly will be expensive research tools, as soon as they are able to make a single version of a device that can take raw chemical stock and build itself, we will be on the road to open source nano design. That is the holy grail that will allow humans to live off planet, live without dependency on Earth resources and generally free themselves from the rat race.