Micromachines Powered by Light

Chris writes "Hungarian researchers succeed in controlling the rotation of micromachines that are powered by light. They have succeeded in reversing the rotation of a micro-rotor trapped in optical tweezers. The crucial element of this system is an oil-immersed objective lens with a very high numerical aperture. Changing the position of the objective lens controls the direction of rotation. The team now hopes to make complex integrated systems where all the components of a micromechanical system are integrated. This could find applications such as measuring the properties of large biological molecules and making components such as miniature pumps and actuators for lab-on-a-chip devices."

Doh!

[Blob Pet]

From the title, I thought immediately that the article was about solar-powered, miniature toy cars.

_THE_ Micromachines?

[torinth]

Chris writes "Hungarian researchers succeed in controlling the rotation of micromachines that are powered by light. They have succeeded in reversing the rotation of a micro-rotor trapped in optical tweezers. The crucial element of this system is an oil-immersed objective lens with a very high numerical aperture. Changing the position of the objective lens controls the direction of rotation. The team now hopes to make complex integrated systems where all the components of a micromechanical system are integrated. This could find applications such as measuring the properties of large biological molecules and making components such as miniature pumps and actuators for lab-on-a-chip devices."

And it only took him .5 seconds to say that.

-Andrew

Re:_THE_ Micromachines?

[satanami69]

God damnit. Two posts in and you already took the only funny things I would probably say today. Although, my +5 funny was going to be a slant on "light-speed" talking. Oh well.

About the tweezers

[PD]

The article doesn't go into much detail about the tweezers, but they are actually quite interesting, if you can believe it. They are described as optical tweezers because most of the tweezers are made with light waves. The little micromachines are so small that they can be suspended between the "prongs" of the tweezers with nothing more than light waves. The control of the micromachines is helped along by the element zircon which is dissolved into the oil suspending the micromachine. Because of diffraction of the light in the tweezers, the zircon forms a sort of crust around the tweezers. Anyway, the purpose of the zircon is that the molecule is asymmetric. This assymmetry causes the micromachines to move almost friction free in one direction, but not in the other. That's part of the reason why the micromachines rotate smoothly instead of just twitching back and forth.