Multimedia Gallery - Nano-car has no engine under the hood, but rolls on wheels 5,000 times smaller than a human cell.

a nano-car with four carbon-based wheels rolling on axles made of linked carbon atoms.

April 22, 2009

Nano-car has no engine under the hood, but rolls on wheels 5,000 times smaller than a human cell.

James Tour and coworkers at Rice University synthesized a molecular car with four carbon-based wheels that roll on axles made from linked carbon atoms. The nano-car's molecular wheels are 5,000 times smaller than a human cell. A powerful technique that allows viewing objects at the atomic level called scanning tunneling microscopy reveals the wheels roll perpendicular to the axles, rather than sliding about like a car on ice as the car moves back and forth on a surface.

Credit: Y. Shirai/Rice University

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