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The World's Smallest Car

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the short-rides dept.

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!

2 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Directional Friction Reduction? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Directional Friction Reduction? by Compuser · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.