An article on the Nanotech Planet website ("Zyvex: Building Nanoscale Machines with Microscopic Engines", by Allen Bernard, 14 February 2002) profiles the steady progress Zyvex is making along a "top-down" pathway toward nanotechnology by attempting to create machines designed to build yet smaller machines that, in turn, build yet smaller machines that manipulate matter at the molecular level in the manner envisioned decades ago by Richard Feynman.
"We'll build the first machine by hand," Zyvex founder and CEO Jim Von Ehr told NanotechPlanet. "And that machine will build other machines … and each of those machines can be ganged together in parallel with other similar machines to build products or another generation of machines."
The strategy is being implemented with the help of a $12.5 million National Institute of Standards and Technology matching grant in October 2001 (see Nanodot post from 25 October 2001). "What we want to end up with after this five-year NIST program is reasonably parallel sub micron scale systems handling sub micron scale parts," Von Ehr said. "I want to be careful about nanoscale. We're not really trying to build with molecules in this program."
