Scientists built the world's smallest nano-engine

University of Cambridge researchers have built the world's smallest working engine. The device, powered by light, could be the basis of future nanoscale machines that are just billionths of a meter in size. Fantastic Voyage, here we come! From the University of Cambridge:

The prototype device is made of tiny charged particles of gold, bound together with temperature-responsive polymers in the form of a gel. When the nano-engine is heated to a certain temperature with a laser, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second, as the polymer coatings expel all the water from the gel and collapse. This has the effect of forcing the gold nanoparticles to bind together into tight clusters. But when the device is cooled, the polymers take on water and expand, and the gold nanoparticles are strongly and quickly pushed apart, like a spring. The results are reported in the journal PNAS.

Its like an explosion, said Dr Tao Ding from Cambridges Cavendish Laboratory, and the papers first author. We have hundreds of gold balls flying apart in a millionth of a second when water molecules inflate the polymers around them.

We know that light can heat up water to power steam engines, said study co-author Dr Ventsislav Valev, now based at the University of Bath. But now we can use light to power a piston engine at the nanoscale.

"Little ANTs: researchers build the worlds tiniest engine" (Thanks, Brad Wieners!)

"Light-induced actuating nano transducers" (PNAS)