Re: Feasibility of 3D printing with atomic holography?

Wasn't it Logan Kearsley who wrote:
_Accelerando_ contains mention of using interfering atomic lasers to
spontaneously generate physical objects, analogous to using interference
patterns in laser light to generate 3D images.

Google has informed me of the use of atomic holographs to print 2D layers of
atoms onto a substrate (mostly as a semiconductor lithography process,
apparently), but, modulo the restriction that everything would have to be
made of boson atoms, what's the feasibility of extending that to actually
construct arbitrary 3D shapes?

Arbitrary macro shape printing has been around for quite a while using
other technologies. For example this system that's typically used for
producing rapid prototypes of manufactured items.
http://www.zcorp.com/whatwedo.asp
Recent developments in this field have increased the range of polymers
that can be used in this sorts of technologies, but the resulting object
typically doesn't have anything like the materials properties that you'd
associate with a conventionally manufactured article. The detail that
can be achieved is presumably about the scale of the pixels that are
produced by an inkjet printer, since the object is created from droplets
of polymer squirted from something that's very similar to an inkjet
print head.


The atomic holography technique is able to place a small quantity of
individual atoms in specific locations. At present it's only working
with a few elements. I'd imagine that producing arbitrary shapes
wouldn't be too much of a problem, but it's going to be awfully slow if
you want to produce anything that's large enough to see without an
electron microscope.

--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
.

Relevant Pages

  • orbitals, flowers, quantum puzzlement;
    ... I have heard it said that there is exist shapes in the world, ... the shapes and symmetries of flowers, ... exactly because atoms aren't all spherically symmetric. ... Smolin wrote " am convinced that quantum mechanics is not a final theory. ...
    (sci.physics.research)
  • Re: Democritus sources for his atomist theory
    ... Democritus' own teachings. ... Democritus says of atoms: "They have all sorts of shapes and appearences and different sizes.... ... But Epicurus added weight as a third. ...
    (soc.history.ancient)
  • orbitals, flowers, QM puzzlement;
    ... I have heard it said that there is exist shapes in the world, ... the shapes and symmetries of flowers, ... exactly because atoms aren't all spherically symmetric. ... Smolin wrote " am convinced that quantum mechanics is not a final theory. ...
    (sci.chem)
  • orbital, flower, QM puzzlement;
    ... I have heard it said that there is exist shapes in the world, ... the shapes and symmetries of flowers, ... exactly because atoms aren't all spherically symmetric. ... Smolin wrote " am convinced that quantum mechanics is not a final theory. ...
    (sci.chem.analytical)