Chapter category: Nanomedicine
Power
Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities
Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr.ISBN: 1-57059-680-8
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Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas
Device energetics may represent the most serious limitation in nanorobot design. Almost all medical nanodevices will be actively powered. Mechanical motions, pumping, chemical transformations and the like all require the expenditure of energy, measured in joules. Even a drug molecule interaction with a biological receptor site reduces free energy by ~50 kT (Section 3.5.2) or ~210 zJ (1 zeptojoule (zJ) = 10-21 joule) at 310 K. Heat dissipation is also a major consideration in nanomachine design, particularly when large numbers of nanomachines are deployed. Power, of course, is the rate of energy consumption or production, measured in joules/ sec or watts. Energy, like money, has both a storage and a transactional character. Section 6.2 reviews the various forms of stored energy that may be accessible to working nanodevices in vivo. Section 6.3 describes how one form of energy can be converted into another form, while Section 6.4 discusses how energy may be transmitted from one place to another—both representing the transactional aspect of energy use. Section 6.5 closes the Chapter with an enumeration of issues and techniques useful in assessing energy requirements and performance restrictions in medical nanodevice design.
Additional chapters from this book:
Other Basic Capabilities
Robert A. Freitas
This final Chapter describes a miscellany of important technical capabilities that may prove useful in some or all medical nanodevices, in various scenarios or theaters of operation. Any one of the...
Manipulation and Locomotion
Robert A. Freitas
Manipulation and mobility are crucial basic capabilities in most classes of medical nanodevices. Manipulation includes handling fluids, biological objects such as tissue matrix fibers or cellular e...
Navigation
Robert A. Freitas
It is difficult to imagine any significant application of medical nanodevices which does not involve navigation, however crude. Devices intended to monitor somatic states, assemble artificial inter...
Communication
Robert A. Freitas
Communication is an important fundamental capability of medical nanorobots. At the most basic level, nanomachines must pass sensory and control data among internal subsystems to ensure stable and c...
Power
Robert A. Freitas
Device energetics may represent the most serious limitation in nanorobot design. Almost all medical nanodevices will be actively powered. Mechanical motions, pumping, chemical transformations and t...
Shapes and Metamorphic Surfaces
Robert A. Freitas
It has been asserted that nanomechanical systems fundamentally differ from systems of biological molecular machinery in their basic architecture—specifically, that nanomechanical components are s...
Nanosensors and Nanoscale Scanning
Robert A. Freitas
Medical nanorobots need to acquire information from their environment to properly execute their assigned tasks. Such acquisition is achieved using onboard nanoscale sensors, or nanosensors, of vari...
Molecular Transport and Sortation
Robert A. Freitas
The human body consists of ~7 x 1027 atoms arranged in a highly aperiodic physical structure. Although 41 chemical elements are commonly found in the body’s construction (Table 3.1), CHON compris...
Pathways to Molecular Manufacturing
Robert A. Freitas
Most contemporary industrial fabrication processes are based on “top-down” technologies, wherein small objects are sawn or machined from larger objects, or small features are imposed on larger ...
The Prospect of Nanomedicine
Robert A. Freitas
The history of disease is vastly older than that of humankind itself. Indeed, disease and parasitism have been inseparable companions to life since the dawn of life on Earth. Fossilized bacteria si...
