Carbon nanotube nanomotor

A device generating linear or rotational motion using carbon nanotube(s) as the primary component, is termed a nanotube nanomotor. Nature already has some of the most efficient and powerful kinds of nanomotors. Some of these natural biological nanomotors have been re-engineered to serve desired purposes. However, such biological nanomotors are designed to work in specific environmental conditions (pH, liquid medium, sources of energy, etc.). Laboratory-made nanotube nanomotors on the other hand are significantly more robust and can operate in diverse environments including varied frequency, temperature, mediums and chemical environments. The vast differences in the dominant forces and criteria between macroscale and micro/nanoscale offer new avenues to construct tailor-made nanomotors. The various beneficial properties of carbon nanotubes makes them the most attractive material to base such nanomotors on.

Just fifteen years after making the world's first micrometer-sized motor, Dr. Alex Zettl led his group at University of California at Berkeley to construct the first nanotube nanomotor in 2003. A few concepts and models have been spun off ever since including the nanoactuator driven by a thermal gradient as well as the conceptual electron windmill, both of which were revealed in 2008.

Coulomb's law states that the electrostatic force between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Hence, as the distance is reduced to less than a few micrometers, a large force can be generated from seemingly small charges on two bodies. However, electrostatic charge scales quadratically, thereby the electrostatic force also scales quadratically, as the following equations show:

Alternatively

Here A is area, C is capacitance, F is electrostatic force, E is electrostatic field, L is length, V is voltage and Q is charge. Despite the scaling nature of the electrostatic force it is one of the major mechanisms of sensing and actuation in the field of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and is the backbone for the working mechanism of the first NEMS nanomotor. The quadratic scaling is alleviated by increasing the number of units generating the electrostatic force as seen in comb drives in many MEMS devices.

Just as the electrostatic force, the frictional force scales quadratically with size F ~ L².

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