The World's Smallest Car

starexplorer writes "Start your Nano-engines? LiveScience.com is reporting that researchers at Rice University have designed the world's smallest car that is no more than 4 nanometers across. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs. Why do it? The team wants to build a fleet of nanotrucks to carry atoms and molecules around minature factories." So it's not exactly self-powered, but it rolls. It's a start!

Comments

Directional Friction Reduction?

[jellomizer]

Could this be used to make materials that have significantly less friction going in one direction and more going the other. The possibilities are endless. Like Bar tables that when drinks are shifted across it can move around corners. and stop right at the customer. Cool

Re:Directional Friction Reduction?

[Compuser]

As someone who has done plenty of STM an nano work in his life,
I can tell you two things:
1. I do not believe they have proven the wheels roll. They think they
have proven it but their STM work is embarassingly bad
(for starters, clean Au-111 surface has herringbone reconstruction
which is not seen in their images, the car is not resolved with anything
close to atomic resolution, temperature drift is atrocious etc.)
2. The surface of gold is very "soft" even at room temperature. Heating
it to 100 C often is enough to restore herringbone reconstruction to
a mechanically randomized surface. By 200 C the surface is essentially
a liquid though gold's partial pressure is still negligible meaning
that this liquid does not yet evaporate. Everything I see in their
paper shows to me that the molecules do not roll, but rather diffuse
or surf along with the surface. Certainly many buckyballs are seen
near step edges, something that happens to all crap diffusing on the
surface because it is energetically favorable to assemble there.

In short, there is no evidence of science or even engineering here.
Slashdot bought into the PR of the kind of nano project that made
nanotechnology into a dirty word among the leading research groups
in the area. BTW, I am not doing STM research and am not planning
to so I am not speaking as a competitor. More like: this is why I
moved on from nano-work, so i don't have to deal with crap-meisters
like this.

Re:Directional Friction Reduction?

[nasor]

I also do "nano" work, and I wondered about this too. The problem with laying single molecules down on gold surfaces is that they tend to diffuse around the surface (or even sink into it) over time even at room temperature, and it happens much faster if the gold is heated. How do they know it's rolling?

Re:One question

[aminorex]

But one can easily imagine pushing such vehicles about using laser beams. A single laser can
push millions of little cars around, using spinning mirrors and judicious timing.

Crookes Radiometer

[kd5ujz]

I wonder if you could attach a dark material, and a light material, and have the car move ala the vanes in a radiometer. with a car this small, light should be able to move it. Of course you would need a slight vacuum. Another problem, would be that people still do not have facts as to how the radiometer works, just theorys.

Can't sit in a nanontech car

[SpaghettiPattern]

You can't sit in a nanontech car. This smallest car ever is still the Fiat 500. Here's an image. And yes, (theoretically) 4 people can sit in it.