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Will You Ride This Nano-Elevator?

Posted by timothy on from the force-your-enemies-to-ride-it dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Italy and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have built the world's smallest elevator. It is a molecular elevator, about 2.5 nanometers high and 3.5 nanometers wide. The molecular platform sits on three legs which can move up and down by one nanometer. The New Scientist and the New York Times (free registration needed) are both reporting about this nano-elevator. The researchers think this system might be used as a drug delivery system. Even if they're right, it will not happen before at least ten years. This overview contains some excerpts from the two articles mentioned above. It also includes a schematical representation of the chemical equilibrium between the two co-conformations of the molecular elevator."

3 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. Elevator? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I wouldn't call it an elevator. To me all elevators cover more vertical distance than they are wide. Worse, the platform is drawn up by the top of the elevator, so the nano-riders would be squashed or at least stop the "elevator" from functioning. Maybe this could be used as a valve, but wouldn't a nano-flap be better?

    I'm trying really hard to have a "first post" here. The first on-topic and non-joke post. I'm not having much luck, so I'll AC it.

  2. Re:Deliver drugs? by thrillseeker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I find it highly unlikely that moving something 1 nanometer will be usful for delivering drugs.

    The movement of a desired molecule a single nanometer may be all that is required to break that single molecule free of the bonding forces keeping it within a delivery package, thus allowing it to flow at an extremely precisely-controlled rate into the bloodstream or a specific cell. Nanomachines that can move individual molecules short distances will also be able to operate at very high frequencies - the result being the tight control of a desired chemical reaction.

  3. Elevator? by dragonfly28 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When you read the original article at Science, you will see this is no elevator in fact.

    Stoddart et al have made a system which can move stepwise in solution by adding or releasing protons (acid). Since this whole experiment is done is solution nothing is going in any particular direction, everything is randomly organized in solution.

    So until this system is fixed on a surface and can actually preform some work, e.g. moving a weight from one station to another, I think the term elevator is premature.

    And if you want to be able use this system for some real work, you should move it out of solution and into the solid phase. This is one of the biggest challenges of all these kin of Rotaxane based systems