There is a car race that scientists around the world are getting ready for. But it doesn’t involve any cars we can see with our eyes or even a magnifying glass. The cars that participate must be as small as 100-1000 atoms and are only a few nanometers in size. Tiny molecules that are moved and controlled by researchers.
Designers are preparing these tiny machines which can move very fast using a “rolling” mechanism. Such “cars” made of a single molecule, are termed as Nanocars and were originally developed at Rice University in 2005.
To have such a race of extremely small molecules, one has to build a picture of an instrument called a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) that has electrons on its’ tip and helps move the Nanocars. A recent paper was published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry that describes five Nanocars that the scientists have prepared for participating in the 2022 competition.
These are all very light weight nano machines and have a differing front and back portion, hence called “dipoles” and can move very fast in an electric gradient as that generated from an STM. The paper was published by a group from Rice University.
The first Nanocar race occurred in 2017, with participants from US, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, and the second one was slated for 2021. However, due to the pandemic, it was pushed back to 2022, as the participants would all need to be present in France for the event. The teams will all assemble and control their Nanocars from France, however their “cars” will actually be in their laboratories in their home countries. They will be controlled remotely via the internet.
Bibliography
Alexis van Venrooy, Víctor García-López, John Tianci Li, James M. Tour, Anton V. Dubrovskiy. Nanocars with Permanent Dipoles: Preparing for the Second International Nanocar Race. The Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2020; DOI: 10.1021/acs.joc.0c01811
“CNRS.” CEMES, www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race?lang=fr.
“Organizer.” NanoCarsRace | Home, nanocar-race.cnrs.fr/indexEnglish.php.
Rice University. "Rolling out next-gen nanocars: Chemists prepare single-molecule racecars in anticipation of 2022 competition." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 October 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201026135752.htm>.
Schledowetz, Juri. “MEMO Project.” Nanocar Race II - MEMO Project, www.memo-project.eu/flatCMS/index.php/Nanocar-Race-II.
