Locomotion of the C60-based nanomachines on graphene surfaces

Seyedeh Mahsa Mofidi,Mohammad Reza Ejtehadi,Alexey V Akimov,Hossein Nejat Pishkenari

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-82280-7

Seyedeh Mahsa Mofidi, Mohammad Reza Ejtehadi + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82280-7

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Abstract

We provide a comprehensive computational characterization of surface motion of two types of nanomachines with four C60 “wheels”: a flexible chassis Nanocar and a rigid chassis Nanotruck. We study the nanocars’ lateral and rotational diffusion as well as the wheels’ rolling motion on two kinds of graphene substrates—flexible single-layer graphene which may form surface ripples and an ideally flat graphene monolayer. We find that the graphene surface ripples facilitate the translational diffusion of Nanocar and Nanotruck, but have little effect on their surface rotation or the rolling of their wheels. The latter two types of motion are strongly affected by the structure of the nanomachines instead. Surface diffusion of both nanomachines occurs preferentially via a sliding mechanism whereas the rolling of the “wheels” contributes little. The axial rotation of all “wheels” is uncorrelated.

Highlights

We provide a comprehensive computational characterization of surface motion of two types of nanomachines with four C60 “wheels”: a flexible chassis Nanocar and a rigid chassis Nanotruck
We study the motion of two types of previously synthesized fullerene-based machines[18,43] with C60 wheels (Fig. 1): (a) a flexible Nanocar (NC, C310H34), a 3 × 4 nm molecule; and (b) a rigid chassis Nanotruck (NT, C282H18N4) a 2 × 3 nm one
The wheels in Nanocar and Nanotruck roll completely independently of each other. This result is consistent with the analogous calculations reported for nanocars moving on gold surfaces[28]. We demonstrate that both the surface and chassis flexibility critically affect the dynamics of nanomachines on graphite surfaces

Summary

Introduction

We provide a comprehensive computational characterization of surface motion of two types of nanomachines with four C60 “wheels”: a flexible chassis Nanocar and a rigid chassis Nanotruck. We find that the graphene surface ripples facilitate the translational diffusion of Nanocar and Nanotruck, but have little effect on their surface rotation or the rolling of their wheels. The latter two types of motion are strongly affected by the structure of the nanomachines instead. Several works reported studies of the motion of a single molecule (e.g. C 60) on graphene[32,34,40,41,42], the dynamics of nanocars on the flexible graphene surface that can form ripples has not been investigated yet. To the best of our knowledge, no such studies have been reported for nanomachines moving of graphene surfaces

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