Goddard on predicting nanostructure properties

Liveblogging the Foresight Conference research sessions: Co-chair Bill Goddard dedicated his talk to Eric Drexler for his role in stimulating this field as long as ago as early 1990’s. Dr. Goddard is describing his computations at the nanoscale, for example of the contact resistance at metal-carbon nanotube junctions. Palladium, platinum, and titanium look the best. You get improved binding conductance using Molecular Anchors (molecule inserted into the junction). Sulphur doesn’t work, various others look encouraging, up to 65 times better than using no molecular anchor in the junction. These things are hard to do experimentally, so these calculations can help save time in the lab by identifying promising (or discouraging) directions in advance. They even file patents in advance of experiment, based only on calculations, and then do the experiments! Now there’s an advantage of being good at theory.