Robust rotation of rotor in a thermally driven nanomotor

Kun Cai,Jiao Shi,Qing-Hua Qin,Jingzhou Yu

doi:10.1038/srep46159

Kun Cai, Jiao Shi + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46159

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Abstract

In the fabrication of a thermally driven rotary nanomotor with the dimension of a few nanometers, fabrication and control precision may have great influence on rotor’s stability of rotational frequency (SRF). To investigate effects of uncertainty of some major factors including temperature, tube length, axial distance between tubes, diameter of tubes and the inward radial deviation (IRD) of atoms in stators on the frequency’s stability, theoretical analysis integrating with numerical experiments are carried out. From the results obtained via molecular dynamics simulation, some key points are illustrated for future fabrication of the thermal driven rotary nanomotor.

Highlights

In the fabrication of a thermally driven rotary nanomotor with the dimension of a few nanometers, fabrication and control precision may have great influence on rotor’s stability of rotational frequency (SRF)
Within the framework of the Smoluchowski-Feynman ratchet, Tu and Hu26 built a rotary nanomotor from double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs)
Cai et al.28 built a new type of nanomotor from DWCNTs, with the outer tube fixed as a stator and the inner tube as the rotor (Fig. 1a)

Summary

Introduction

In the fabrication of a thermally driven rotary nanomotor with the dimension of a few nanometers, fabrication and control precision may have great influence on rotor’s stability of rotational frequency (SRF). Wang et al. proposed a rotary nanomotor from nanotubes and fullerenes Their numerical experiment showed that the blades bonded on CNT-rotor have periodic charging and discharging, and the rotor can rotate in an external electric field. As the simplest among the four models, the thermal driven rotary nanomotor with the axial length of the rotor less than 10 nm and the diameter of stators less than 2 nm, are adopted in the present investigation. To estimate the influence of geometry uncertainty of the thermal driven rotary nanomotor on the rotation of rotor, in the present study, systematic theoretical analysis and numerical experiments are carried out. The reason is that the potential barriers of the two ends of every stator are very close to each other, and the potential barrier at the ends of a stator prevents the linear motion of the associated rotor

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Conclusion