(Describer) Streams of light collide to create a globe filled with water. Title: Science Nation. In computer animation, sides are folded to form cubes.
[explosion]
(male narrator)
In the world of nanotechnology,
being able to build and operate
small devices is a big deal.
Boxes about as thick as a hair
release liquid on command.
Cell-sized micro grippers
retrieve tiny objects,
their structures too tiny
to be assembled by any machine.
(man)
The remarkable thing
(Describer) David Gracias:
is that these structures
fold up on their own
without tweezers
or human intervention.
(narrator)
With support from the
National Science Foundation,
Govind Menon at Brown University
and David Gracias
at Johns Hopkins University
are developing self-assembling
3-D nanostructures.
From small things
come big ideas.
(Gracias)
There is a need in medicine
to create particles
that are smart,
that can target specific tumors
or a specific disease site
without delivering drug
to the rest of the body,
which limits side effects.
Basically consists of
these nice rigid moves.
(narrator)
Menon and his team
figure out how to best design
self-folding nanostructures
by flattening them out.
They work with many shapes,
like the 12-sided polyhedron,
which can potentially fold
into a box-like container.
(Describer) Menon:
Imagine cutting it up
and flattening out the faces.
A two-dimensional unfolding
of the polyhedron.
(narrator)
Not all flat shapes
are created equal.
Some fold better than others.
(Menon)
The best are the most compact.
(narrator)
They developed
an algorithm at Brown
to narrow the field
to a few compact shapes
that easily fold
into 3-D structures.
Those designs
then went to Johns Hopkins,
where they created
the physical configuration.
(Gracias)
We create structures
that have two parts,
a face,
(Describer) A pentagon.
and then we deposit
a material
in between the faces
and at the edges.
(narrator)
They're heated up,
creating surface tension
that pulls the edges together
and fuses the structures shut.
The era of nanotechnology
promises to revolutionize
our lives.
We can make them
with many different materials:
metals, semiconductors,
and even biodegradable polymers
for drug delivery applications.
(narrator)
Now that's thinking
outside the box.
(Describer) A globe turns.
For Science Nation,
I'm Miles O'Brien.
