WEBVTT

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Let's imagine a sculptor
building a statue,

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just chipping away with his chisel.

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Michelangelo had this elegant way
of describing it when he said,

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"Every block of stone
has a statue inside of it,

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and it's the task
of the sculptor to discover it."

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But what if he worked
in the opposite direction?

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Not from a solid block of stone,

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but from a pile of dust,

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somehow gluing millions of these particles
together to form a statue.

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I know that's an absurd notion.

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It's probably impossible.

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The only way you get
a statue from a pile of dust

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is if the statue built itself --

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if somehow we could compel millions
of these particles to come together

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to form the statue.

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Now, as odd as that sounds,

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that is almost exactly the problem
I work on in my lab.

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I don't build with stone,

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I build with nanomaterials.

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They're these just impossibly small,
fascinating little objects.

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They're so small that if this controller
was a nanoparticle,

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a human hair would be the size
of this entire room.

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And they're at the heart of a field
we call nanotechnology,

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which I'm sure we've all heard about,

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and we've all heard
how it is going to change everything.

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When I was a graduate student,

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it was one of the most exciting times
to be working in nanotechnology.

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There were scientific breakthroughs
happening all the time.

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The conferences were buzzing,

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there was tons of money
pouring in from funding agencies.

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And the reason is

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when objects get really small,

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they're governed by a different set
of physics that govern ordinary objects,

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like the ones we interact with.

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We call this physics quantum mechanics.

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And what it tells you is
that you can precisely tune their behavior

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just by making seemingly
small changes to them,

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like adding or removing
a handful of atoms,

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or twisting the material.

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It's like this ultimate toolkit.

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You really felt empowered;
you felt like you could make anything.

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And we were doing it --

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and by we I mean my whole
generation of graduate students.

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We were trying to make blazing fast
computers using nanomaterials.

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We were constructing quantum dots

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that could one day go in your body
and find and fight disease.

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There were even groups
trying to make an elevator to space

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using carbon nanotubes.

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You can look that up, that's true.

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Anyways, we thought it was going to affect

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all parts of science and technology,
from computing to medicine.

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And I have to admit,

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I drank all of the Kool-Aid.

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I mean, every last drop.

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But that was 15 years ago,

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and --

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fantastic science was done,
really important work.

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We've learned a lot.

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We were never able to translate
that science into new technologies --

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into technologies
that could actually impact people.

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And the reason is, these nanomaterials --

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they're like a double-edged sword.

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The same thing that makes
them so interesting --

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their small size --

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also makes them impossible to work with.

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It's literally like trying to build
a statue out of a pile of dust.

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And we just don't have the tools
that are small enough to work with them.

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But even if we did,
it wouldn't really matter,

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because we couldn't one by one
place millions of particles together

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to build a technology.

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So because of that,

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all of the promise
and all of the excitement

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has remained just that:
promise and excitement.

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We don't have any
disease-fighting nanobots,

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there's no elevators to space,

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and the thing that I'm most interested in,
no new types of computing.

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Now that last one,
that's a really important one.

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We just have come to expect

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the pace of computing advancements
to go on indefinitely.

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We've built entire economies on this idea.

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And this pace exists

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because of our ability
to pack more and more devices

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onto a computer chip.

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And as those devices get smaller,

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they get faster, they consume less power

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and they get cheaper.

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And it's this convergence
that gives us this incredible pace.

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As an example:

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if I took the room-sized computer
that sent three men to the moon and back

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and somehow compressed it --

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compressed the world's
greatest computer of its day,

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so it was the same size
as your smartphone --

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your actual smartphone,

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that thing you spent 300 bucks on
and just toss out every two years,

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would blow this thing away.

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You would not be impressed.

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It couldn't do anything
that your smartphone does.

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It would be slow,

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you couldn't put any of your stuff on it,

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you could possibly
get through the first two minutes

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of a "Walking Dead" episode
if you're lucky --

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(Laughter)

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The point is the progress --
it's not gradual.

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The progress is relentless.

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It's exponential.

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It compounds on itself year after year,

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to the point where
if you compare a technology

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from one generation to the next,

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they're almost unrecognizable.

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And we owe it to ourselves
to keep this progress going.

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We want to say the same thing
10, 20, 30 years from now:

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look what we've done
over the last 30 years.

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Yet we know this progress
may not last forever.

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In fact, the party's kind of winding down.

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It's like "last call for alcohol," right?

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If you look under the covers,

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by many metrics
like speed and performance,

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the progress has already slowed to a halt.

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So if we want to keep this party going,

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we have to do what we've
always been able to do,

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and that is to innovate.

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So our group's role
and our group's mission

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is to innovate
by employing carbon nanotubes,

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because we think that they can
provide a path to continue this pace.

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They are just like they sound.

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They're tiny, hollow tubes
of carbon atoms,

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and their nanoscale size,
that small size,

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gives rise to these
just outstanding electronic properties.

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And the science tells us
if we could employ them in computing,

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we could see up to a ten times
improvement in performance.

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It's like skipping through several
technology generations in just one step.

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So there we have it.

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We have this really important problem

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and we have what is basically
the ideal solution.

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The science is screaming at us,

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"This is what you should be doing
to solve your problem."

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So, all right, let's get started,

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let's do this.

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But you just run right back
into that double-edged sword.

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This "ideal solution" contains a material
that's impossible to work with.

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I'd have to arrange billions of them
just to make one single computer chip.

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It's that same conundrum,
it's like this undying problem.

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At this point, we said, "Let's just stop.

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Let's not go down that same road.

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Let's just figure out what's missing.

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What are we not dealing with?

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What are we not doing
that needs to be done?"

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It's like in "The Godfather," right?

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When Fredo betrays his brother Michael,

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we all know what needs to be done.

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Fredo's got to go.

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(Laughter)

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But Michael -- he puts it off.

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Fine, I get it.

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Their mother's still alive,
it would make her upset.

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We just said,

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"What's the Fredo in our problem?"

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What are we not dealing with?

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What are we not doing,

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but needs to be done
to make this a success?"

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And the answer is
that the statue has to build itself.

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We have to find a way, somehow,

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to compel, to convince
billions of these particles

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to assemble themselves
into the technology.

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We can't do it for them.
They have to do it for themselves.

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And it's the hard way,
and this is not trivial,

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but in this case, it's the only way.

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Now, as it turns out,
this is not that alien of a problem.

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We just don't build anything this way.

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People don't build anything this way.

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But if you look around --
and there's examples everywhere --

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Mother Nature builds everything this way.

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Everything is built from the bottom up.

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You can go to the beach,

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you'll find these simple organisms
that use proteins --

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basically molecules --

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to template what is essentially sand,

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just plucking it from the sea

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and building these extraordinary
architectures with extreme diversity.

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And nature's not crude like us,
just hacking away.

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She's elegant and smart,

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building with what's available,
molecule by molecule,

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making structures with a complexity

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and a diversity
that we can't even approach.

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And she's already at the nano.

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She's been there
for hundreds of millions of years.

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We're the ones that are late to the party.

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So we decided that we're going
to use the same tool that nature uses,

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and that's chemistry.

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Chemistry is the missing tool.

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And chemistry works in this case

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because these nanoscale objects
are about the same size as molecules,

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so we can use them
to steer these objects around,

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much like a tool.

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That's exactly what we've done in our lab.

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We've developed chemistry
that goes into the pile of dust,

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into the pile of nanoparticles,

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and pulls out exactly the ones we need.

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Then we can use chemistry to arrange
literally billions of these particles

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into the pattern
we need to build circuits.

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And because we can do that,

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we can build circuits
that are many times faster

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than what anyone's been able
to make using nanomaterials before.

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Chemistry's the missing tool,

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and every day our tool gets sharper
and gets more precise.

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And eventually --

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and we hope this is
within a handful of years --

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we can deliver on one
of those original promises.

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Now, computing is just one example.

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It's the one that I'm interested in,
that my group is really invested in,

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but there are others
in renewable energy, in medicine,

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in structural materials,

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where the science is going to tell you
to move towards the nano.

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That's where the biggest benefit is.

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But if we're going to do that,

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the scientists of today and tomorrow
are going to need new tools --

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tools just like the ones I described.

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And they will need chemistry.
That's the point.

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The beauty of science is that
once you develop these new tools,

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they're out there.

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They're out there forever,

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and anyone anywhere
can pick them up and use them,

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and help to deliver
on the promise of nanotechnology.

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Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate it.

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(Applause)