Researcher Develops World's Smallest Car

I bet you thought the Mini Cooper was small. At 4 nanometers long and three wide, the Nanocar, developed by researchers at Rice University, takes the cake as the smallest car in the world.

"You couldn't build a smaller car," says Jim Tour, professor of chemistry and leader of the Rice University research team. The Nanocar is built of a single molecule, and it's impossible to assemble anything smaller than an individual molecule.

And with four independently rotating axles, built-in suspension, and oversized wheels, it looks more like a racer in the DARPA Challenge than any car on Route 66. With its rotating axles, the Nanocar moves directionally, which means either forward or backward, with its wheels rolling, as opposed to sliding back and forth which is commonly done on the nanoscale. The oversized wheels and suspension allow the Nanocar to drive over positive and negative atomic steps, or nanoscale speedbumps and potholes, if you will, necessary for even the thin layer of gold that was used in Tour's experiments, which can resemble the mountainous surface of the moon.

Read the full story at TechnoRide.com.

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.