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        Nanotechnology movie: Walking molecule now carries packages

        Alert reader Ron Zilm brings our attention to a nanotechnology research achievement at UC Riverside in California by Ludwig Bartels, originally a physicist in Germany but now in the UCR chemistry department:

        Walking Molecule Now Carries Packages
        Molecule walks in a straight line and carries a tiny shopping bag in each hand

        A research team, led by UC Riversideโ€™s Ludwig Bartels, was the first to design a molecule that can move in a straight line on a flat surface. Now this team has found a way to attach cargo: two CO2 molecules, making the nano-walker a molecule carrier.

        The work will be published Thursday, Jan. 18 in โ€œScience Expressโ€ [abstract and movie (Supporting Online Material)] and later in the print-version of the journal โ€œScience.โ€

        โ€œThis is an unprecedented step forward towards the realization of molecular-scale machinery,โ€ said Bartels, associate professor of chemistry and a member of UCRโ€™s Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. โ€œOur experiments show a means to transport molecules reliably. This will become as important to the molecular machinery of the future as trucks and conveyor belts are for factories of today.โ€

        The last paper Bartels and his team published on this subject generated a great deal of interest. It was included in the American Institute of Physics โ€œTop 25 Physics Stories for 2005.โ€

        The new molecule carrier runs on a copper surface. It can pick up and release up to two carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules and carry them along its straight path. โ€œCarrying a load slows the molecule downโ€ explained Bartels. โ€œAttachment of one CO2 molecule makes the carrier need twice as much energy for a step, and a carrier with two CO2s requires roughly three times the energy. This is not unlike a human being carrying heavy loads in one or both hands.โ€

        Bartels explained that using machines at the scale of single molecules will ultimately be the most efficient way to build objects or to deliver material.
        โ€œIt resembles the way nature does it: the molecule carrier transports carbon dioxide across a surface,โ€ he said. โ€œIn the human body, the molecule hemoglobin carries oxygen from and carbon dioxide to the lungs, thereby allowing us to breathe โ€“ and to live.โ€

        Bartels cautions, however, that this research is still in its infancy. โ€œIn 2005 we invented the molecular walker, which moves in a straight line rather than hopping around in all directions as a normal molecule would do. Now it can carry a load.โ€

        Bartels said the continuing evolutionary process will take some time. โ€œTen years ago, a cell phone could just place calls, nothing else. Now it plays mp3-files, organizes your day, lets you send emails and browse the web.โ€ He said his team will be pursuing the next step for this molecule carrier. โ€œNext, we would like to be able to make one go around corners, rotate its cargo or send out photons to tell us where it is.โ€

        See the video on the groupโ€™s homepage. Go, Riverside! โ€”Christine

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