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timtyler comments on The hard limits of hard nanotech - Less Wrong
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I figure most nanotechnology will work at room temperature and pressure.
If a particular manufacturing step requires a vaccuum, you can always just pump all the undesirable atoms out with a pump. If a low temperature is required, you can always just use a minature freezer. However, there is going to be plenty you can do without doing either.
All? This sounds like something from someone who's never worked with vacuums. Vacuums are expensive and asymptotic. Whether or not you can get "enough of" the undesirable atoms out is still a question for many nanotech applications.
This sounds correct to me. My current mental model is that low temperatures could be essential for general-purpose assembly and/or repair, but most of the products created (particularly the diamondoid ones) would function at higher temperatures.
Lower temperatures allow for advantages like superconductivity and higher CPU speeds, and vacuum allows for super-insulation and frictionlessness. So there will probably be cases where these conditions are desirable for efficiency's sake even if not absolutely required.