Of course most Nanodot readers will want to study this 76-page report (PDF) in great detail, but for the few who don’t quite get around to this task, here are some of the more ambitious parts:
In the section on 2006 and 2007 Activities by Agency, NIST says they will continue to “devise ways to build ‘designer nanostructures’ on an atom-by-atom basis”.
In Highlights of the 2007 Request, the first item on the list: “Research on controlled self-assembly and guided assembly of novel engineered nanoscale materials and hierarchical structures”.
NSF will “Begin a new focus on research on active nanostructures and nanosystems” and “Conduct interdisciplinary research on methods for design of systems composed of nanodevices, including multiple layers of abstractions and various mathematical models to represent component behavior in different layers.” NSF will also develop “specialized software for nanosystems” and “design automation tools for assembling systems of large numbers of heterogeneous nanocomponents, including fluidics and robotics.”
Strategic priorities underlying the President’s 2007 budget request for nanotech are listed, with the first one being “Research into use of self-assembly, biologically driven self-assembly, and scanning-probe-based techniques for control of matter at the nanoscale, including biologically inspired processes and techniques, and research into methods for integrating manufactured nanoscale products into larger application structures”.
See the graphic on page 23 (p. 37 of PDF file) and useful budget charts on pages 35-39 (pp. 49-53 of PDF file).
Included on pages 49-50 (pp. 63-63 of PDF) is the program for the Workshop “To determine the technical feasibility of molecular self-assembly for the manufacture of materials and devices at the molecular scale” held Feb 9-11, 2005, sponsored by the National Academies Committee to Review the NNI. This was to fulfill a legislative direction to evaluate the concept now referred to as productive nanosystems, so you’ll see quite a few familiar names on the program. The report by this committee has not yet been issued, to my knowledge. —Christine
