MACHINE PHASE FULLERENE NANOTECHNOLOGY

Recent advances in fullerene science and technology suggest that it ma y be possible, in the distant future, to design and build atomically p recise programmable machines composed largely of functionalized fuller enes. Large numbers of such machines with appropriate interconnections could conceivably create a material able to react to the environment and repair itself. This paper reviews some of the experimental and the oretical work relating to these materials, sometimes called machine ph ase, including the fullerene gears and high-density memory recently de signed and simulated in our laboratory.