Tiny "gears" that operate on a molecular level rotate under pressure and move like nanoscale machines, researchers found in a new study.
Working with funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Department of Energy, a team studied a self-assembling material called a superlattice, which is made of 500-atom nanoparticles of silver and organic molecule, Clean Technica reported.
The nanoparticles are similar to gears, moving in unison as they respond to pressure. The Georgia Tech and the University of Toledo researchers working on the project believe these "gears," which can rotate as much as 23 degrees before returning to their original position, could perform machine functions on a nanoscale.
"As we squeeze on this material, it gets softer and softer and suddenly experiences a dramatic change," Uzi Landman, a Regents' and F.E. Callaway professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a school news release.
"When we look at the orientation of the microscopic structure of the crystal in the region of this transition, we see that something very unusual happens. The structures start to rotate with respect to one another, creating a molecular machine with some of the smallest moving elements ever observed."
The clusters put themselves together, directed by hydrogen bonds. The researchers first studied the superlattice structure in quantum-mechanical molecular dynamics simulations in a lab and then with experimental research.
"The hydrogen bond likes to have directionality in its orientation," Landman explained. "When you press on the superlattice, it wants to maintain the hydrogen bonds. In the process of trying to maintain the hydrogen bonds, all the organic ligands bend the silver cores in one layer one way, and those in the next layer bend and rotate the other way."
The superlattice material could be used to absorb energy and create mechanical movement from force. It could also be compressed for use in switches and sensors at a molecular scale, said the news release.
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