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From: fbaube@NOTE.NSF.GOV.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Nanotech applications
Message-ID: <8712041156.aa22561@note.nsf.gov>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 13:10:52 EST
Article-I.D.: note.8712041156.aa22561
Posted: Fri Dec  4 13:10:52 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Dec-87 06:18:48 EST
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People have been casting about for nanotech applications.

The current EE Times says that most of the new superconductors
are materials that are a jumble of crystalline structures, and
that the superconducting may be occurring along the
inter-crystal faults.  This would explain their fragility and the
difficulty of reproducing results.

If this *is* the mechanism, a nanotech engineer would
devise/design/program a "constructor" to build atoms into
crystals up to a certain size, and then piece together these tiny
crystals into a macro structure where they are not at an
orientation where they can further coalesce into a larger
crystal, but rather, where intercrystal faults are created in
accordance with design parameters.

I apologize for imprecisions in the use of terminology.