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Little tech wins big as nanocar inventor takes top science award

2008-12-23 13:53:14

Nanovehicles could one day be used to build memory devices, buildings

Lucas Mearian

December 18, 2008 (Computerworld) The inventor of a car slightly wider than a

strand of DNA took the top prize in nanotechnologies this week. James Tour, a

professor of chemistry at Rice University, won the Foresight Institute Feynman

Prize for experimental nanotechnology for his nanocar, which is four nanometers

across and includes a chassis with an engine, a pivoting suspension and

rotating axles attached to rolling buckyball wheels, each made of 60 carbon

atoms.

Tour and his team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers not only built a

car, but also constructed a nanotruck capable of carrying a payload. Asked why

he did it, Tour's answer was simple: so that we can someday construct buildings

and other large objects with molecular-size vehicles.

James Tour's nanocar in action

James Tour's nanocar in action

Click to view slide show of nanocar images

It took Tour and his team eight years to build the car. One of the significant

challenges was attaching the wheels because the buckyballs had the adverse

affect of shutting down the binding property -- the palladium reaction -- used

to form the rest of the vehicle.

Over the next 30 years, Tour's nanotechnology could produce quantum-dot memory,

which involves stringing together metal atoms in patterns that could then store

data. Each quantum dot would consist of 50 metal atoms, he said.

Of course, that's a long way off, Tour acknowledged. He hasn't even patented

the technology because by the time it could be used to make money, the patents

would be expired. And we're not talking about a few nanotrucks carrying metal

atoms to construct skyscrapers but 1023 or more vehicles, all carrying

nanoparticles in orchestration, he said.

Until now, engineers have built things by taking larger objects and cutting

them down to make smaller ones, Tour said. For example, trees are cut down to

make tables, and as such, large silicon wafers are cut away to make

transistors. But in the future, things will be built not from the top down, but

the bottom up -- as in nature.

Tour pointed to hemoglobin as an example. Each heme group -- containing one

iron atom -- carries only one molecule of oxygen, but billions of them go back

and forth carrying oxygen from our lungs to the cells crying out for it. And on

the way back out of the cells, the hemes detoxify by carrying out CO2. In the

same way, nanovehicles could carry atoms to construct objects.

While self-assembling machines have been theorized for years, Tour argues that

they can't succeed in creating complex structures, such as metals, because

complex structures have many irregular segments to them.

"For example, nature builds by self-assembly but also by enzymatic assembly.

Enzymes are natures nanomachines. They take molecules and stitch them together

in nonperiodic patterns," Tour said. "That's what you need for complex

assembly."

While enzymes don't work well outside of a biological host, if nano-size

machines can be built that can pick up small objects like a molecule, bring

them into place, attach them, and then go and pick up another one and put that

in place, "then we can do exactly what enzymes do," he said.

There are three types of nanotechnology construction: passive, hybrid and

active. Today, passive nanotechnology is being used with carbon nanotubes,

which can greatly enhance the toughness of rubber, for example, or create

pathways for bits of data.

Hybrids are nanostructures configured with another material. For example, Tour

and his team have demonstrated the ability to combine carbon nanostructures

made of graphite with silicon to create memory devices. It's the active

nanotechnology, 15 years out or more, that will be useful in constructing large

materials, Tour said.

So far, Tour's team has not only been able to build nanovehicles, but it has

also been able to power them through two methods: heat and light. By heating

the surface that the cars are on, the team is able to excite the molecules in

the vehicle, and they move forward in a straight line until they hit an object.

The light motion works on the principle of photo activation.

"We've made a motorized car, and for that, you shine light on it and the motor

spins in one direction and pushes the car like a paddle wheel on the surface,"

Tour said. "Then we have other ones called nanoworms that wiggle back and forth

as you shine light on them."