Nanomotor

A nanomotor is a nanotechnology-based device, operating at a molecular level, and which is capable of effecting forces of the order of piconewtons. Energy acquired by a nanomotor can thus be converted into motion at the molecular level. It has been proposed by nanotechnology-based scientists to integrate molecular motor proteins that occur in living cells into molecular motors for other purposes. These molecular motors, or ‘nanomotors’ as they are dubbed, can be implanted in artificial devices to perform much the same functions that their living-cell counterparts perform. Such a motor protein developed can be able to move required ‘objects’ within the device. Biological nanomotors are designed to work in specific environmental conditions (pH, liquid medium, sources of energy, etc). Man-made nanotube nanomotors on the other hand are significantly more robust and can operate in diverse environments including varied frequency, temperature, mediums and chemical environments. Although it has been demonstrated that synthetic nanotube nanoactuators can be built and are highly controllable, they are currently are not able to match the biological and macroscale nanomotors in terms of efficiency and scalability to accomplish higher tasks. However, further research, the electron windmill for example in this area promises to overcome this problem very soon.

Further information

1. Progress toward a Rationally Designed, Chemically Powered Rotary Molecular Motor T. Ross Kelly, Xiaolu Cai, Fehmi Damkaci, Sreeletha B. Panicker, Bin Tu, Simon M. Bushell, Ivan Cornella, Matthew J. Piggott, Richard Salives, Marta Cavero, Yajun Zhao, and Serge Jasmin J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 376-386.
2. Net directed 180° aryl–aryl bond rotation in a prototypical achiral biaryl lactone synthetic molecular motor Ying Lin, Bart J. Dahl and Bruce P. Branchaud Tetrahedron Lett. 2005, 46, 8359-8362.
3. A Reversible, Unidirectional Molecular Rotary Motor Driven by Chemical Energy Science 2005, 310, 80-82.
4. Light-driven monodirectional molecular rotor Nagatoshi Koumura, Robert W. J. Zijlstra, Richard A. van Delden, Nobuyuki Harada, Ben L. Feringa Nature 1999, 401, 152-155.
5. Fine Tuning of the Rotary Motion by Structural Modification in Light-Driven Unidirectional Molecular Motors Javier Vicario, Martin Walko, Auke Meetsma and Ben L. Feringa J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128, 5127-5135.
6. Controlling the speed of rotation in molecular motors. Dramatic acceleration of the rotary motion by structural modification Javier Vicario, Auke Meetsma and Ben L. Feringa Chem. Commun., 2005, 5910-5912.
7. En Route to a Motorized Nanocar Jean-François Morin, Yasuhiro Shirai, and James M. Tour Org. Lett.; 2006, 8, 1713-1716.
8. P. Král and T. Seideman, Current-induced rotation of helical molecular wires, J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 123, 184702.
9. B. Wang, L. Vukovic and P. Král, Nanoscale rotary motors driven by electron tunneling, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2008, 101, 186808.
10. Статья Nanomotor из Wikipedia, свободной энциклопедии. Доступно под лицензией Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.
11. Статья Молекулярные роторы; из Wikipedia, свободной энциклопедии. Доступно под лицензией Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

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