p2pnet OT news: The world’s smallest car, complete with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles, has been built by scientists at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

The ‘nanocar’ wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece, and the entire vehicle measures just 3-4 nanometers across, making it slightly wider than a strand of DNA, says a university press release.

A human hair, by comparison, is about 80,000 nanometers in diameter, says the university, going on:

Other research groups have created nanoscale objects that are shaped like automobiles, but study co-author Kevin F. Kelly, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, said Rice’s vehicle is the first that actually functions like a car, rolling on four wheels in a direction perpendicular to its axles.

Kelly said it’s fairly easy to build nanoscale objects that slide around on a surface but, Proving that we were rolling – not slipping and sliding – was one of the most difficult parts of this project.”

He and graduate student Andrew Osgood achieved that measuring the movement of the nanocars across a gold surface, says Rice.

At room temperature, strong electrical bonds hold the buckyball wheels tightly against the gold, but heating to about 200 degrees Celsius frees them to roll. To prove that the cars were rolling rather than sliding, Kelly and Osgood took STM images every minute and watched the cars progress. Because nanocars’ axles are slightly longer than the wheelbase – the distance between axles – they could determine the way the cars were oriented and whether they moved perpendicular to the axles.

The team found a way to grab the cars with an STM probe tip and pull them: it was easier to drag the cars in the direction of wheel rotation than to pull them sideways.

And they’ve already followed up by designing a light-driven nanocar and a nanotruck that’s capable of carrying a payload, says the statement, adding that other team members included chemistry graduate student Yasuhiro Shirai and post doctoral associate Yuming Zhao.

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See:-
press release – Rice scientists build world’s first single-molecule car, October 20, 2005

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