Scientist create nanomotor!

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "get your motor running" when the structure in question is just 500 nanometers wide--so small that it would take 300 to match the width of a human hair. But researchers describe such a device today in the journal Nature. The electric rotor could eventually be put to a variety of uses ranging from optical switching to microfluidics.

Originally posted by 29MV29

Can anyone think of any applications for this?

Originally posted by ADVISOR
How exactly is that thing supposed to work? What is it magnetically moved? Just one moveing part, thats odd but the posiblities are endless.

From SCIAM:
Alex Zettl of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues fashioned the motor by affixing a multiwalled carbon nanotube to a silicon wafer and attaching a gold square about 200 nanometers wide to the tube. The team then selectively etched parts of the wafer so the metal blade could rotate freely. By varying the voltage applied to different parts of the wafer, the scientists could control how the metal plate moved[/QUOTE]

LOL Fury, that's funny.