US Patent 8171568 - Positional diamondoid mechanosynthesis

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8171568.html

Diamond mechanosythesis is a slightly more realistic offshoot of the suggestions by Eric Drexler regarding bottom-up molecular nanotechnology. Although most of the ideas in this area appear to me to be based more on computational modeling than experimental reality this latest patent teaches a type of tooltip which (if enabled) may provide a route to bottom-up nanoassembly. Claim 1 reads:

1. A tooltip for performing a site-specific mechanosynthetic chemical reaction wherein a reactant or plurality of reactants are selected from the group consisting of the carbon group and non-metal elements, excluding the noble gases, the tooltip comprising:

a first atom or plurality of atoms arranged in an engineered atomically precise molecular structure in which either or both the bonding pattern and the electronic state of said first atom or plurality of atoms is altered during said site-specific mechanosynthetic chemical reaction; and

a second atom or plurality of atoms affixed to said first atom or plurality of atoms, said second atom or plurality of atoms arranged in an engineered atomically precise molecular structure in which neither the bonding pattern nor the electronic state of said second atom or plurality of atoms is altered during said site-specific mechanosynthetic chemical reaction;

wherein there is a barrier to undesired reactions sufficient to achieve a desired reliability of operation at a given temperature because the application of mechanical force is required to drive a desired chemical reaction.