• Question: what do you want to build with the atoms in your 3D printer?

    Asked by Samterbi to Philip on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      Ultimately, I’d love to be able to do computer-controlled construction of an entirely new compound (but we’d only be able to make a very small (nanoscopic!) amount of that compound.) But we’ve got a long way to go before then. Within the next ten to twenty years I hope that we can build a nanoparticle an atom at a time. No-one in the world has got anywhere close to doing this, and for good reason — it’s exceptionally difficult.

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