Molecule Walks Like Man

Molecule Walks Like Man

After a nano motor, a nano elevator, nano-capsules (and a whole bunch of other, simple machines at the nanoscale), there is now a nanomachine that walks like a human.

From the article:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A research team, led by UC Riverside’s Ludwig Bartels, is the first to design a molecule that can move in a straight line on a flat surface. It achieves this by closely mimicking human walking. The “nano-walker” offers a new approach for storing large amounts of information on a tiny chip and demonstrates that concepts from the world we live in can be duplicated at the nanometer scale – the scale of atoms and molecules.

...

“Similar to a human walking, where one foot is kept on the ground while the other moves forward and propels the body, our molecule always has one linker on a flat surface, which prevents the molecule from stumbling to the side or veering off course,” said Bartels, assistant professor of chemistry and a member of UCR’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. “In tests, DTA took more than 10,000 steps without losing its balance once. Our work proves that molecules can be designed deliberately to perform certain dynamic tasks on surfaces.”

Even though this article stresses that this nano walker might be applied in storage technology, I think it's pretty safe to conclude that advances like these will also help out nicely with realizing The Future Of Molecular Computing.