IBM using DNA in Nanotube Chips

If you are still thinking that chips must be built, think again. The latest trend IBM is exploring is GROWING chips from the building block of life: DNA.

The sceintists at IBM are experimenting with using something called nanotubes, which are just strands of carbon atoms that can conduct electricity, with DNA. The DNA then does as DNA will, it replicates itself along with the nanotubes into a grid that can perform calculations or serve as information storage.

Greg Wallraff, an IBM scientist and a lithography and materials expert working on the project shared that, “”What we are really making are tiny DNA circuit boards that will be used to assemble other components. These are DNA nanostructures that are self-assembled into discrete shapes. Our goal is to use these structures as bread boards on which to assemble carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires, quantum dots.”

This is not new, research on “DNA origami” conducted by California Institute of Technology’s Paul Rothemund, is currently being used by researchers on a global level to experiment with nanotech self-replicating. Scientists hope that by perfecting the process, chips can be grown rather than assembled.

An added bonus beyond self-replication, is that DNA can both apply and recognize, features as small as two nanometers. where as even the most cutting-edge traditional chips today have features that average 45 nanometers. 

How are they doing it?

Although the research is still early, scientists have a good idea of where they are headed with the new technology.

First, scientists would take scaffolds of designer DNA that is created into very specific shapes that will be used in the nanotubing grid. If you can belive this, scientists have actually made DNA structures in the shapes of circles, stars, and happy faces.

So then, a photo-resistant surface is etched with e-beam lithography and the combination of several films. Pour the DNA into this new mold and let the DNA do it’s thing, spreading out through the mold and growing naturally between the patterns of the substrate surface and the physical and chemical forces between the molecules. This is followed up by pouring in the nanotubes and allowing the interactions between the nanotubing and DNA to grow into the pattern/grid naturally.

So in a nutshell, what does it mean? It means that we are moving away from technology that is “assembled” by human or machine and created from components, and towards organic technology that grows and self-replicates itself. The DNA that creates our human form, our base, now creating nano-chips that will hold and apply information, chips that will likely be used in the future in every tech device we utilize as their base. 

As we thin further the veils between life and tech, it’s easy to see that technology will one day not too far in our future become something that is no longer seperate from the organic lifeforms that use it, but rather another new form of organic intelligence that we interface and interact with co-creatively.

And on the viral level, you have to admit that even if you have within you a resistance or subtle feeling that we are moving into territory where the lines between us and tech are uncomfortably thinning, it’s still cool.

Your Tech-Goddess,
Erika