[Coco] OT: Nanomotors

[Tony Schountz]

Well, I was reading a paper on the 1918 influenza pandemic in today's  
issue of _Science_ and the article immediately following it caught my  
attention. Apparently, a group from the Netherlands has managed to  
make such beasts that run on chemical energy. Although "nanogears"  
have been made in the past, no one had yet produced motors. This, of  
course, has been one of the limitations in producing mobile  
nanoobjects. It has interesting, and perhaps frightful, prospects.  
Below is the paper's abstract.

T.
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A Reversible, Unidirectional Molecular Rotary Motor Driven by  
Chemical Energy

Stephen P. Fletcher, Frédéric Dumur, Michael M. Pollard, Ben L. Feringa

Department of Organic and Molecular Inorganic Chemistry, Stratingh  
Institute, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen,  
Netherlands.

With the long-term goal of producing nanometer-scale machines, we  
describe here the unidirectional rotary motion of a synthetic  
molecular structure fueled by chemical conversions. The basis of the  
rotation is the movement of a phenyl rotor relative to a naphthyl  
stator about a single bond axle. The sense of rotation is governed by  
the choice of chemical reagents that power the motor through four  
chemically distinct stations. Within the stations, the rotor is held  
in place by structural features that limit the extent of the rotor's  
Brownian motion relative to the stator.