Ultrafast Nanomotors
3 November 2008, 10:05
Categories: molecular-machines--devices
Nanomotors can move forwards through liquid, transporting pharmaceutical agents to specific areas or facilitating the movement of specimen molecules via microchip. The best-performing of these is a tiny catalytic nanotube which contains platinum at one end and gold at the other and is propelled through a medium that contains the fuel it needs, which is often hydrogen peroxide.
Previously, nanomotors could attain speeds of 10 to 20 micrometres per second, but now a team from the University of California and Arizona State University has made improvements that have resulted in speeds increasing to over 150 micrometres per second. “These nanorods travel about 75 times their own length in one second. We are approaching the speed of the most efficient biological nanomotors, including flagellated bacteria,” says Joseph Wang.
In related news, researchers at the École Polytechnique de Montréal have bound live, swimming bacteria to microscopic beads to develop a self-propelling device, dubbed a nanobot (but it’s really a microbot). The hybrids can be steered through the body using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), because the bacteria naturally contain magnetic particles. The researchers were able to make the bacteria propel themselves in any direction they wanted. What’s more, they are just two microns in diameter—small enough to fit through the smallest blood vessels in the human body. The team treated the polymer beads roughly 150 nanometers in size with antibodies so that the bacteria would attach to them. Ultimately, the researchers plan to modify the beads so that they also carry cancer-killing drugs.
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