Nanorobotic mass transport

Mass transport at attogram (10^-18 g) level within, from, and between nanochannels is of growing interest from both fundamental and application perspectives. Mass transport systems at this scale provide a platform for the investigation of nanofluidics and can serve as components for nanomanufacturing systems that feed atoms and connect them into molecules, supramolecules, and, ultimately, super-precision nanostructured products. Such systems will, in turn, enable other nanosystems such as electronic, electromechanical, photonic, and biomedical ones for circuit spot welding, sensing and actuation, single-molecule detection, targeted drug delivery, etc. Nanorobotics enables these nanometer-scale systems through its ability to position and assemble pipes, to deliver the mass in a controlled way, and to tune and characterize these systems in situ. We can now envision a mass network that will one day process material atom by atom just as the Internet processes information byte by byte. This science fiction-like dream is becoming an engineering reality, and the intermediate achievements have shown potential applications for near-term applications.