A group of Russian researchers proposed a model of “nano-machines” that can move in a given direction with a record high speed, conveying a certain payload.
In the work took part the specialists of the Moscow physical-technical Institute (MFTI) and the Institute of chemical physics them. N. N. Semenova Russian Academy of Sciences, and their colleagues from the Institute of surface chemistry of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
We are talking about creating a dipole fotomotor — tiny managed device that is activated by light. These “nano-machines” in prospect can be used for high-speed transport of nanoparticles. Technology, for example, may find application in chemistry and physics — to create new analytical and synthetic tools, as well as in biology and medicine to deliver drugs to a diseased portion of living organisms or gene therapy.
MIPT
Activation of nanomotor occurs at the moment of irradiation by a laser pulse. Moreover, momentum should go in resonance with the electrons inside nanocylinder. What if this process scientists describe as follows: “Further there is a separation of charge in a semiconductor nanocylinder, it electrostatically interacts with the polar substrate. Cyclic switching on and off of light leads to the dependence of the potential energy of interaction of the cylinder with the substrate from time to time, this dependency and makes nanomotor to move in a given direction“.
The proposed model of fotomotor assumes travel speed of 1 mm/s, which is about three orders of magnitude higher than that of natural protein motors or comparable models on the basis of organic molecules.
