Nanotrucks and Nanotrains: Workhorses of the Future?

June 3, 2008 -- They might not look like your Ford F-150 or Toyota Camry, but a new generation of nanocars and nanotrucks (along with nanotrains and even nanobackhoes) could eventually build anything from computer memory chips to entire buildings, atom by atom.

Now they don't even have to be built; some nanomachines can build themselves, according to an upcoming study.

"Most things that people build are top-down. You cut down a tree to build a table," said James Tour, a scientist at Rice University and co-author on the upcoming study, which will appear in the upcoming issue of the new journal Tetrahedron.

"But what if you could make the table from assembling molecules together from the bottom up?" said Tour.

Tour developed the first nanocar -- so small that 30,000 of them could drive abreast down a single human hair -- in 2005. It had four wheels, each made of one 60-atom carbon buckyball and two axles connected by a tiny light- and heat-powered drive-shaft.

Since then, Tour's group has develop a total of 12 different nanovehicle models, including a six-wheeled version and larger nanotrucks to transport the nanocars.

In his most recent work, Tour's group reports nanocars and nanotrains that assemble themselves.

Both the nanocars and the nanotrains start out with the same parts -- essentially, vehicle halves.

Tour's group connects the two halves with a molecular glue that creates chemical bonds between the parts. The placement of the glue determines if the resulting vehicle will be a car or a train.