Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6494, USA.
ACS Nano. 2011 Apr 26;5(4):2425-32. doi: 10.1021/nn201011m. Epub 2011 Apr 1.
The inherently small system sizes involved imply that, in the absence of large applied fields designed to overwhelm them, fluctuations will play a major role in determining the response and functionality of nanoscale systems. Theoretical advances over the past two decades have provided fresh insight into fluctuations and their role at the nanoscale, even in the presence of arbitrarily large applied external fields. In contrast to traditional engineered systems, Nature's approach to nanotechnology is to embrace and to exploit fluctuations and noise to create adaptable, persistent, optimized functional architectures. We describe some of the mechanisms by which Nature exploits noise, with the goal of applying these lessons to engineered physical and chemical nanosystems. In particular, we emphasize the critical role of the tails of distributions of properties in both physical and biological nanosystems and their impact on system behavior.
所涉及的系统尺寸本来就很小，这意味着，如果没有设计用来压倒它们的大外场，那么涨落将在很大程度上决定纳米尺度系统的响应和功能。过去二十年的理论进展为涨落及其在纳米尺度上的作用提供了新的认识，即使在外加任意大的外场的情况下也是如此。与传统的工程系统不同，自然界对纳米技术的处理方法是接受和利用涨落和噪声来创建自适应、持久、优化的功能架构。我们描述了自然界利用噪声的一些机制，目的是将这些经验教训应用于工程物理和化学纳米系统。特别是，我们强调了物理和生物纳米系统中属性分布尾部在系统行为中的关键作用。
