What is molecular nanotechnology?
Molecular nanotechnology is an anticipated manufacturing technology that will make it possible to build complex three-dimensional structures to atomic specification using chemical reactions directed by nonbiological machinery. In molecular manufacturing, each atom would go to a selected place, bonding with other atoms in a precisely designated manner. Nanotechnology promises to give us thorough control of the structure of matter. Since most of the stuff around us and inside us is composed of atoms and gets its characteristic properties from the placement of these atoms, the ability to control the structure of matter on the atomic scale has many applications. As K. Eric Drexler wrote in Engines of Creation, the first book on nanotechnology (published in 1986): Coal and diamonds, sand and computer chips, cancer and healthy tissue: throughout history, variations in the arrangement of atoms have distinguished the cheap from the cherished, the diseased from the healthy. Arranged one way, at
