Irreverence

posted on 20 February 2008 13:50

According to CNET, IBM Research is working on using DNA to build a near-self-assembled carbon nanotune storage unit.

No dount more patents will be filed and IBM's image as a scientific research institution will be rightly enhanced, but I can't see IBM bring mind-bendingly leading-edge storage technology to the market based on this.

The idea is that a DNA nanostructure is built into a particular shape. E-beam lithography would be used to etch a pattern on a photo-resistant surface and a solution of these shapely DNA nanostructures poured on it. The structures would space themselves out and carbon nanotubes poured onto them.

The nanotubes would fill the holes in the DNA shapes and then the DNA shapes would be removed, somehow, leaving a nanotube thing which could be used as a storage device, one very much smaller and with a much higher storage density per cubic nanometre or whatever.

(IBM image of carbon nanotube model above.)

This is so far out in terms of creating things that could possibly be combined into bigger things and processes that might conceivably be commercialised at some stage into a storage device that not even the Hubble telescope can see that far.