Self Assembley Processes In Nanoscience

Speaker: Ed Coffman

25th April 2005 , 2pm , Room 519 Claremont Tower

Abstract

Advances in chemical synthesis have laid the groundwork for computation at nanoscale, where self assembly becomes the core process, either as a computation itself, or as a mechanism for fabricating nanodevices. By such processes, elementary particles, such as DNA molecules, combine into large complexes following built-in bonding rules. We study self assembly viewed as a random growth process, addressing such as questions as:``How long does a given structure take to self-assemble?'' ``How does one optimize the yield of a particular self-assembly process?'' ``What are the trade-offs between the reliability (error tolerance) and speed of self assembly?'' Answers to these questions bring out unexpected connections with well studied problems in physics, chemistry, and computer science.