Productive nanosystems

This article may lack focus or may be about more than one topic. Please help improve this article, possibly by splitting the article and/or by introducing a disambiguation page, or discuss this issue on the talk page. (May 2019)

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (January 2024)

In 2007, productive nanosystems were defined as functional nanoscale systems that make atomically-specified structures and devices under programmatic control, i.e., performing atomically precise manufacturing.^[1] As of 2015, such devices were only hypothetical, and productive nanosystems represented a more advanced approach among several to perform Atomically Precise Manufacturing. A workshop on Integrated Nanosystems for Atomically Precise Manufacturing was held by the Department of Energy in 2015.^[2]

Present-day technologies are limited in various ways. Large atomically precise structures (that is, virtually defect-free) do not exist. Complex 3D nanoscale structures exist in the form of folded linear molecules such as DNA origami and proteins. As of 2018, it was also possible to build very small atomically precise structures using scanning probe microscopy to construct molecules such as FeCO^[3] and Triangulene, or to perform hydrogen depassivation lithography.^[4] But it is not yet possible to combine components in a systematic way to build larger, more complex systems.

Principles of physics and examples from nature both suggest that it will be possible to extend atomically precise fabrication to more complex products of larger size, involving a wider range of materials. An example of progress in this direction would be Christian Schafmeister's work on bis-peptides.^[5]