Designers of a Tiny Lift, Artificial Muscles, Mini Motor win the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
How small is small? Think of a machine, which is 1,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.
The 2016 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry have created molecular machines of this small size. Three scientists Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Benard L. Feringa have linked up molecules that can work like a machine.
In 1983, Sauvage linked two ring shaped molecules into a chain in a way that they could work like a machine. In 1991, Stoddard threaded a molecular ring onto a molecular axle and further worked to create a molecular lift, a molecular muscle and a molecular computer chip. In 1999 another scientist Feringa designed a molecular motor with a molecular blade that could spin in the same direction. Interestingly, it is believed that the development of the molecular motor is at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s. Scientists at that time had designed various spinning cranks and wheels but were not aware that someday these developments would lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans and food processors.
Sauvage is now at the University of Strasbourg, France. Stoddard is at Northwestern University, USA and Feringa is at University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.
What is the future of these molecular machines? “Molecular machines will most likely be used in the development of things such as new materials, sensors and energy storage systems.”
http://www.livescience.com/56381-nobel-chemistry-for-worlds-smallest-machines.html