World's smallest motor: 1 nanometer in diameter

Chemists at Tufts University have invented the world's smallest electric motor, measuring a mere 1 nanometer across. The researchers have detailed their work online in Nature Nanotechnology and plan to submit the Tufts-built electric motor to Guinness World Records.

The motor, comprised of nothing more than a single molecule, was put to the test in a proof of concept demonstration. The team provided a charge using a special low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope.

Electricity was sent from the metal tip on the microscope to a butyl methyl sulfide molecule that had been placed on a conductive copper surface. This sulfur-containing molecule had carbon and hydrogen atoms radiating off to form what looked like two arms, with four carbons on one side and one on the other. These carbon chains were free to rotate around the sulfur-copper bond.

You can read more about this story at our sister site SmartPlanet.

[Bojax39]

No doubt this technology will have many uses. Still, the idea of machines so tiny they can invade organisms much more easily than a virus can should give us pause....

[MagnaCartaUK]

Perhaps this could be employed in medical research somehow. Maybe in detecting disease far more accurately in the human body's less accessible places. What's the size of the smallest camera, and how many of these motors would it take to propel it around the body, either now, or more probably in the near future? Intersting article anyway.

[Transatlantique]

Can it run my car, heat and cool my house, feed me, protect me from terrorism of any kind for a mere fraction of the monetary and environmental cost I'm already paying? Or will this technology cause more trouble in the world than there already is.

George Carlin stated that technology will not save us from ourselves, and this is true. So why are we tinkering around with this? I must be as hopeless as bubbabob9 claims people are if they don't get the potential uses for this. How does CBS think the average person will even understand what the hell they are talking about? Finish the story and tell me how this will save humanity from killing each other.

[ge556]

Hey, CBS, it's "composed of", or "comprising", not "comprised of".

[rf35]

Now THIS is the type of research we should be funding, not studies about whether American couples kiss each other enough!

[parisdakar]

Well, eggheads, that's nice, but make it do something useful, THEN you'll impress me.