November 04, 2005
Two-Legged Molecule
Molecule Walks This Way
"Armies of the molecular walkers could be used to store large amounts of data in relatively small spaces or to do blazingly fast abacus-style computation."
Scientists making molecular-scale mechanical devices have been mining the past for ideas. This makes sense because things move much faster at the molecular scale. The enhanced speed opens up new possibilities for mechanical computation devices like the ancient abacus.
Researchers from the University of California at Riverside and Kansas State University have created a two-legged molecule that can walk in a straight line on a flat copper surface without a track.
The structure of the molecule ensures that only one leg at a time is in contact with a surface, and as the leading leg lands the trailing leg lifts from the surface and swings forward. Copper is a crystal, and a copper surface has three directions of symmetry, or orientations where copper atoms line up. Energy supplied by a heat source or a nudge from microscope probe starts the molecular walker (representing an abacus bead), which then follows one of these directions of symmetry (representing an abacus line).
Armies of the molecular walkers could be used to store large amounts of data in relatively small spaces or to do blazingly fast abacus-style computation.
(Unidirectional Adsorbate Motion on a High-Symmetry Surface: "Walking" Molecules Can Stay the Course, Physical Review Letters, October 14, 2005) [via Technology Research News]
Posted by jo at November 4, 2005 03:45 PM
