© 2004 Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle. All Rights Reserved.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle, Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 2004.

5.1.9.K Product Structure

K1. Product Physicality. See C1 and D1.

K2. Product Naturalicity.

K3. Product Technology Level or Granularity. This dimension describes the product feature size, not the overall product size (see K5).

K4. Product Physical Dimensionality. While it is true that any physical product must have three spatial dimensions, this factor pertains to the number of active or important dimensions. Quantum dots are effectively 0-D products; strands of DNA and many other polymers are effectively 1-D products; and the surfaces of lithographically produced computer chips are effectively 2-D products.

K5. Product Scale.

K6. Product Mass.

K7. Product Structural Fixity.

K8. Product Particity. Is the product composed of discrete parts?

K9. Product Structural Error Rate. What percentage of the product mass is incorrectly manufactured? One possible metric would be the percentage of mispositioned or mis-selected atoms in the product structure. However, this description is limited to parts with hard-edged error criteria. Some replicators may require parts to be judged on tolerance, not on placement error of atoms.

Last updated on 1 August 2005