What the world's tiniest 'monster truck' reveals

said braka 11:38 PM
"The overarching goal was to advertise nanoscience to

the public," Eric Masson, Ph.D., says. "Then there was the technical challenge of manipulating multiple nanocars at the same time using a scanning tunneling microscope, or STM, instrument. Additionally, every team had its own goal. Ours was to see if we could deposit an intact supramolecular assembly onto a surface, and control its motion."
Masson and Saw-Wai Hla, Ph.D., co-led the team from Ohio University. They designed and built the largest car at about 3.5 nanometers in length. Officially called the Bobcat Nanowagon, it had a pseudorotaxane H-shaped frame with four relatively large cucurbituril molecules as wheels. Because of the size, it was ironically dubbed a monster truck. But unlike normal vehicles, it didn't have a motor. So to move the nanocar, the researchers used the STM instrument in Hla's lab.
"We incorporated positive charge receptors in the car," Hla says. "So if we injected a  in the STM tip pointed at the car, there would be repulsion, and the car would move. We found it worked very well."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-world-tiniest-monster-truck-reveals.html#jCp