What is Molecular Nanotechnology (MNT)?
Molecular nanotechnology (“MNT”) is an anticipated manufacturing technology that would allow precise control and positional assembly of molecule-sized building blocks through the use of nano-scale manipulator arms. Molecular nanotechnology is usually considered distinct from the more inclusive term “nanotechnology”, which is now used to refer to a wide range of scientific or technological projects that focus on phenomena or properties of the nanometer scale (around 0.1-100nm). Nanotechnology is already a blossoming field, but molecular nanotechnology — the goal of productive, molecular-scale machine systems — is still in the preliminary research stage. Nanotechnology was first introduced in 1959, in a talk by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”. Feynman proposed using a set of conventional-sized robot arms to construct a replica of themselves, but one-tenth the original size, then using that new set of arms to manufacture a
