Physics:Surface tension-driven nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator

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Description

A surface tension-driven nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator, or NEMRO for short, is currently the world's smallest motor. Constructed from a 200-nanometer-long nanotube, a pair of liquid indium spheres, one measuring 5 nanometers across and the other 15 nanometers across. Electricity flows across the nanotube from the large sphere to the smaller sphere, causing the spheres to shuffle atoms between the large sphere and the small sphere, making the larger sphere shrink and the smaller sphere grow. When the two spheres touch, they instantly transfer the shifted mass back to the large sphere, and both spheres return to their original size. The effect requires 20 microwatts of current and produces 10 nanonewtons of force in the direction of the mass transfer.

The rate of mass transfer is very fast. The rate is also variable, capable of ranging from kilohertz to gigahertz.

The motor works because of surface tension. Surface tension grows stronger with decreasing scale, with visible effects below 1 mm, and at the nanometer scale, surface tension is more powerful a force than electromagnetism or gravity.

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