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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 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 object.
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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 about how
it is going to change everything.
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You know, 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 is 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;
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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 and elevator to space
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using carbon nanotubes.
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You can look that up,
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it's true.
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Anyways, we thought it was
going to effect all parts
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of science and technology,
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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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so fantastic science was done,
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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,
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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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they're 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,
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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 techonology.
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So because of that,
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all of the promise
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and all of the excitement
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has remained just that:
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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,
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no new types of computing.
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Now that last one,
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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
because of our ability
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to pack more and more devices
onto a computer chip.
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And as those devices get smaller,
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they get faster,
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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's the same size as your smartphone,
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your actualy 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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Like, 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,
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the progress is 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
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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 --
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that small size --
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gives rise to these just outstanding
electronic properties.
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The science tells us if we could
employ them in computing,
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we could see up to 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,
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it's like undying problem.
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At this point,
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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 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 --
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he puts it off.
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Fine, I get it.
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Their mother's still alive,
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it would make her upset.
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(Laughter)
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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,
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somehow,
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to compel,
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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.
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They have to do it for themselves.
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And it's the hard way,
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and this is not trivial,
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but in this case,
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it's the only way.
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As it turns out,
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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 --
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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,
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just hacking away.
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She's elegant and smart,
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building with what's available,
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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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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 everyday 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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Computing is just one example.
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It's the one that I'm interested in,
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that my group is really invested in,
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but there are others in renewable energy,
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in medicine,
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in structural materials,
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where the science is going to tell you
to move towards that 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.
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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.
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(Applause)