Nano car race: an unprecedented molecular car race

Last year, the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three chemists who studied molecular machines, and then Bernard L Feringa, one of the Dutch chemists who won the prize, took another step forward to build a four-wheel drive molecular car At present, the family of "molecular car" is gradually expanding, and even ready to compete Felinga successfully made the molecular rotor leaves rotate continuously in the same direction, and developed a "nano car" (source: 21CN) On April 28, the first nano car race will be held at the Research Center for materials and structures in Toulouse, France Laboratories from nine countries have formed six teams Scientists use their own designed molecular cars to race on a pure gold track and see who drives the farthest in a given time Scanning tunneling microscope, STM (source: nanocar race CNRS FR)? Unlike the cars we see everyday, molecular cars don't have levers, gears and bearings They are nano scale According to Scientific American, molecular cars are about 1000 times thinner than hair Driven by the energy of the electric pulse, the molecular car can advance about five nanometers every hour: nanometers is one billionth of a meter, 500000 of the ball point pen marking, 30000 of the hair diameter, 100 times smaller than the DNA molecule, about the length of four silicon atoms arranged together The STM image of molecular car (source: nanocar race CNRS FR) the gold "track" in the vacuum the competition ground of nanocar race is not a common track, but a gold plane under the scanning tunneling microscope The competition uses the pure gold "the competition field", the area approximately is the human nail cap size, has two curves and three straight paths Why play in pure gold? The organizer explained that the surface of gold is easy to be treated and leveled For the nano world, the smooth mirror, polished stainless steel surface and other surfaces that are commonly seen in the daily life, "gullies" are as spectacular as the Grand Canyon of Colorado In contrast, the gold surface can be relatively simple to achieve nano level "flatness" In addition, the venue environment is in a vacuum state, the temperature is 5k-7k, and the distance from absolute zero is only one step away Competition Poster (source: nanocar race CNRS FR) the great future of the nano world The British Guardian described the difficulty of the competition as "assembling LEGO toys in a dark place with boxing gloves", and the main purpose of the competition is to show that scientists are able to combine molecules with precise structure and control it In the eyes of Bernard L felinga and his colleagues, this is a big step in the molecular machine In the future, more complex molecular machines will also be built on these technologies, and they can even be used as controlled biological transport, just like the role of enzymes PS: there is a live channel on the official website http://nanocar-race.cnrs.fr/indexenglish.php Attach the nano car model of 6 teams Nano car windmill from Dresden University of Technology (source: nano car race CNRS FR) nano Swiss nano Dragster from Basel University (source: nano car race CNRS FR) nano car from Ohio University has not been named yet, and the model is like the big foot racing car (source: nano car race CNRS FR) the host's nano car the green buggy (source: nano car race CNRS FR) Nanocar dipolar Racer of the joint team of Graz University in Austria and Rice University in the United States (source: nanocar race CNRS FR) nanocar NIMS mana car of the National Materials Research Center in Japan (source: nanocar race CNRS FR)