Scientists have created an engine of just 16 atoms

This smallest engine in the world was created by a scientific group from the Swiss Federal Laboratory in close cooperation with the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.

What is such an engine made of?

It is made of only 16 atoms and is barely one nanometer in size. But, despite its very modest size, this is a complete engine.

It has a rotor, which is an acetylene molecule consisting of 4 atoms. And the stator is made of 6 palladium atoms and 6 gallium atoms.

In this case, the stator also plays the role of a kind of "ratchet mechanism", due to which the rotor rotates in one direction.

According to the representatives of the scientific group, they managed to achieve compliance with the direction of rotation by 99%, and it is this moment that fundamentally distinguishes the created engine from all previous developments.

How the engine works

The created atomic engine is capable of operating on two types of energy:

1. Warmly.

2. Electricity.

Moreover, in the case of using heat, the rotor rotates in a random direction and at a standard temperature the rotor is capable of performing up to several million revolutions per second.

And even when using electricity, the rotor rotates exclusively in a single direction and at the same time the energy of the electron is enough for 1/6 of a revolution.

With an increase in current strength, the rotor speed increases, but at the same time, the likelihood that that the rotor will rotate in an arbitrary direction, that is, there will be enough energy to overcome the "ratchet mechanism".

Why do you need such a "toy"

At first glance, this seems like just a toy, but it has already served as an excellent laboratory model for studying such a phenomenon as quantum tunneling.

So, according to the law of quantum physics, in a nano engine, the rotor had to easily overcome the resistance of the ratchet mechanism even in the case when the supplied energy would not be enough for this, only practice has shown that this is not happened.

And when energy was supplied in excess and, according to theory, it was enough to overcome the resistance, this did not happen, and the movement was still carried out in a single direction.

So, if we recall the second law of thermodynamics, then, according to it, the entropy in a closed system should not decrease. And it turns out that if there is no loss of energy during tunneling, then in this case the rotor in the nano engine can rotate in a random direction.

And as the experiment showed, even when the excess energy was supplied, the rotation took place practically in one direction. This says only one thing: during tunneling, some of the energy is lost.

This is just the beginning of experimenting with the world's smallest engine. And we can only guess what discoveries it will allow to make.

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