The World's Smallest Motor

For most of this morning I was shut out from the internet again. For some reason, the proxy server here seems to give quite a lot of problems. Having no internet connection seemed ok for a while, but when I started to do my programming, I realised that without the internet, I had no resources to help with my problems.

So, I had to return to the most reliable pencil and paper and try to solve the problem by drawing diagrams. But, I guess it wasn't so bad cos, on the bright side, I got to practise some of my drawing skills and I think I should be able to use the drawings in my report.

Well, anyway, today's article is a report on the development of the world's smallest motor. Here's a small gif animation of how it looks like.



The scientific name for this is a surface-tension-driven nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator. The motor works by shuffling atoms between two molten metal droplets, one bigger than the other, in a carbon nanotube. When the smaller droplet gets large enough and comes into contact with the larger one, the larger droplet rapidly takes back the atoms it had previously lost. This quick shift results in the power stroke of the motor.

The amount of energy produced by this motor is small (20 microwatts), but for its size that's very efficient. The motor is only 200 nanometers in size, which means about 100 could be fit side to side across the width of a strand of hair. Comparatively, "if it could be scaled up to the size of an automobile engine, it would be 100 million times more powerful than a Toyota Camry’s 225 horsepower V6 engine", the researchers say.

It seems that nanotech is really going places. Researchers say that such a motor could one day be used to power nanobots, allowing them to crawl, walk, swim or fly.

Hopefully, nanobots will become reality soon, as the potential medical benefits of such nanobots are tremendous. Viruses and bacteria could be easily eradicated by these nanobots once injected into the blood stream, cancer could be more accurately treated by delivering chemotherapy drugs directly to the tumor, there's even the possibility that such nanobots could help repair our bodies, keeping us in the pink of health always.

Scientists recently unveiled the tiniest electric motor ever built. You could stuff hundreds of them into the period at the end of this sentence.

One day a similar engine might power a tiny mechanical doctor that would travel through your body in the ultimate house call.

The motor works by shuffling atoms between two molten metal droplets in a carbon nanotube.

Click here for the full article.