Smallest Engine Is Singular Molecule

Researchers have combined the smallest electric engine ever devised.

The motor, done from a singular proton only a billionth of a metre across, is reported in Nature Nanotechnology .

The diminutive engine could have applications in both nanotechnology and in medicine, where tiny amounts of work may be put to effective use.

Tiny rotors formed on singular molecules have been shown before, but this is the initial that may be away driven by an electric current.

"People have found before that they can make motors driven by light or by containing alkali reactions, but the situation there is that you're pushing billions of them at a time - every singular engine in your beaker," mentioned Charles Sykes, a chemist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.

"The interesting thing about the electrical a is that you can stir up and watch the suit of only one, and you can see how that thing's behaving in actual time," he told BBC News.

The butyl methyl sulphide proton was placed on a washed copper surface, where its singular sulphur atom acted as a pivot.

The tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope - a tiny pyramid with a indicate only an atom or two opposite - was used to flue electrical assign in to the motor, together with to take images of the proton as it spun.

It spins in both directions, at a rate as high as 120 revolutions per second.

But averaged over time, there is a net revolution in a direction.

By modifying the proton slightly, it could be used to produce x-ray deviation or to couple in to what are well known as nano-electromechanical systems, Dr Sykes said.

"The next thing to do is to obtain the thing to do work that you can portion - to couple it to other molecules, backing them up next to a other so they're similar to pocket-sized cog-wheels, and then watch the revolution propagation down the chain," he said.

As well as combining a segment of the minute machines the world has ever seen, such minute mechanics could be utilitarian in disinfectant - for example, in the tranquil smoothness of drug to targeted locations.

But is to moment, Dr Sykes and his group are in meeting with the Guinness Book of World Records to have their engine approved as the smallest ever.