At the 2007 Foresight Vision Weekend, Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas in a joint session discussed research toward diamond mechanosynthesis. The two co-founders of the Nanofactory Collaboration offered a preview their recently accepted paper “A minimal toolset for diamond mechanosynthesis” to be published in JCTN (Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience). The talk included a description of nine molecular tools and all reaction pathways involved in their synthesis from raw materials. This took the co-authors three years to finish, and they view it as the critical next step in developing molecular nanotechnology for atomically-precise manufacturing.
