Tufts researchers build single-molecule electric motor

Daily Mail : Researchers at Tufts University in Massachusetts have built the world’s smallest electric motor—consisting of a single molecule just a nanometer in size, or 1/60 000 the diameter of a human hair. Using a scanning tunneling microscope, Charles Sykes and coworkers rotated a single butyl methyl sulfide molecule by nudging it with an electric field. Although molecular motors powered by other means, such as chemical reactions or light, have been built, they cannot achieve the precision of the Tufts team’s electric motor: Even the smallest amount of chemicals or the narrowest beam of light will affect clusters of molecules. The team’s electric motor , as detailed in Nature Nanotechnology, could lead to advances in medicine, to deliver tiny amounts of drugs to very specific locations, and in nanosensors.