Abstract

The fabrication of integrated nanomachinary systems can enable break-through applications in nanoelectronics, photonics, bioengineering, and drug delivery or disease treatment. Naturally occurring nanomotors are biological motor proteins powered by catalytic reactions, which converts the chemical energy into mechanical energy directly. It has been demonstrated recently that using a simple catalytic reaction and an asymmetric bimetallic nanorod, one can produce catalytic nanomotors that mimic the autonomous motions of bionanomotors. Yet, the construction of artificial nanomachines remains a major contemporary challenge due to the lack of a flexible fabrication technique that can design the desired dynamic components. Thee are five biggest challenges for manmade nanomotor systems: (1) how to build different motion parts; (2) how to assembly different motion parts and functionality into an integrated system; (3) how to control and program different functionality; (4) how to power the nanomotor system; and (5) what are the physical and chemical performance of those nanomotor system in fluidic environment. In this talk, I will discuss how to tackle some of those challenges using a fabrication method called dynamic shadowing growth technique, and will show some nanomotor components, systems, and the way to control the motion.  However, this research area is still in very early stage, and is full of opportunities. I hope interested people from different disciplines, physics, chemistry, biology and engineering, could work together to advance this field.