Is it possible to scale up this motor for automotive / pump or other applications?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1384325/postsThe motor works by shuffling atoms between two molten metal droplets in a carbon nanotube.
One droplet is even smaller than the other. When a small electric current is applied to the droplets, atoms slowly eek off the larger droplet and join the smaller one. The small droplet grows – but never gets as big as the other droplet – and eventually bumps into the large droplet. As they touch, the large droplet rapidly sops up the atoms it had previously sloughed off. This quick shift in energy produces a power stroke.
The technique exploits the fact that surface tension -- the tendency of atoms or molecules to resist separating -- becomes more important at small scales. Surface tension is the same thing that allows some insects to walk on water.
The motor, a surface-tension-driven nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator, was built by a team of researchers led by Alex Zettl at the University of California, Berkeley.
Although the amount of energy produced is small -- 20 microwatts -- it is quite impressive in relation to the tiny scale of the motor. The whole setup is less than 200 nanometers on a side, or hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair. If it could be scaled up to the size of an automobile engine, it would be 100 million times more powerful than a Toyota Camry’s 225 horsepower V6 engine, the researchers say.
