MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules)

Here’s a look at the cars:

The nanocars of the eight teams selected for the second edition of the NanoCar Race. Courtesy: © IC/IPMC CNRS Strasbourg; IMDEA Madrid/Univ. Linköping ; Technical Inst./CFAED Univ. Dresde ; NIMS Tsukuba ; Univ.Paul-Sabatier/CEMES CNRS Toulouse/NAIST Nara ; Ohio Univ. ; Rice Univ./Graz Univ. ; CFM DIPC CSIS San Sebastian/CIQUS Univ. Santiago de Comp.

A March 11, 2022 news item on Nanowerk announces the upcoming 2nd NanoCar race,

The world’s smallest car race will return to Toulouse (southwestern France) on 24-25 March. Eight international teams will be at the starting line for the competition. Christian Joachim, a CNRS [Centre national de la recherche scientifique] research professor and the event organiser, provides details regarding the issues involved.
Event: NanoCar Race II, March 24-25, 2022 at CEMES [Centre d’Élaboration de Matériaux et d’Etudes Structurales] (La Boule), in Toulouse. The race will be broadcast on the event’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQixqt0xegeVEmo9y9gMXQ
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A March 7, 2022 CNRS press release written by Grégory Fléchet, which originated the news item, proceeds in an interview format accompanied by footnotes, Note 1: Links have been removed; Note 2: The press release is illustrated with numerous embedded images,

Five years after the first NanoCar Race, this new and – to say the least – unique race is finally returning to the CEMES.1 Why such a long wait?
Christian Joachim:2 The very first molecule-car race in April 2017 required four years of preparation. For this second edition, the call for applications was made in March 2018, with a view to holding the competition in Toulouse in 2020. In late 2019, the international organising committee selected 11 teams from the 23 statements of intent submitted from all continents. Everything was in place for the race to be held in the spring of 2020. Unfortunately the Covid-19 epidemic broke out, forcing us to put the event on standby until July 2021. After this long break, only eight teams remained. We interviewed them by videoconference in September 2021, with support from the French embassies in their respective countries as well as the CNRS offices abroad, in order to confirm their level of commitment. The eight teams then travelled to Toulouse on 23 November, 2021 to officially present their molecule-car during C’NANO 2021. Together we set a date for the race.
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How does the scanning tunneling microscope that will capture the images of the race and fuel the molecule-cars operate?
C. J.: We are mostly using the imaging function of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). With a single atom at its tip, this high-precision instrument can scan a material’s surface, while keeping that surface less than a nanometre away from the particle. At that distance, a “tunneling” current is established, on the order of 1 nanoampere for 1 volt of applied voltage. This weak current converted into an amplified voltage can stabilise the distance between the tip and the surface without them touching. This enables us to produce, line by line, an image of the observed material.
For greater precision, the scanning should be performed at a temperature near absolute zero, around -270 °C. This prevents the atoms that make up the track’s surface from being tossed about by thermal agitation. Once the molecule-car is on the racetrack, the driver uses the tip of the STM to supply energy and move the vehicle forward. To do this, the pilot can increase the voltage between the tip and the surface, or can leave the former at the same place on the molecule-car for a certain amount of time, between 100 milliseconds and a few seconds. In this latter scenario, the tunnel current’s small inelastic effect through the molecule-car increases the vibrational energy of some of its mechanical degrees of freedom, which moves the car forward step by step, generally a few hundred picometres at a time (1 pm=10^-12m).
Can you describe the structure of the track on which the nanocars will race?
C. J.: The track was created on the surface of a pure gold crystal – in this case a pastille 8 mm in diameter – naturally featuring small grooves. These folds, which minimise the gold crystal’s surface energy, are arranged in straight lines of 100 to 200 nm, forming lanes for the molecule-cars. Track length differs from one gold pastille to another, as does the arrangement of narrow and wide grooves, which generally vary between 4-10 nm.
This layout depends on the preparation methods used by each competitor. At the end of each straight line in a given track, groups of atoms on the surface shift slightly, thereby creating a small bend – measuring between 4-5 nm with a curve of 20-30° – that connects it with the next straight line. This is the chief difficulty of the race, as a molecule-car can easily end up stuck on a bend. During the first NanoCar Race, drivers noticed that the most effective way to negotiate a turn was to bypass it on the right or left by following the next track.
This year eight teams will compete.4 What do their nanocars look like?
C. J.: Some molecule-cars, like the one from the Strasbourg Institute of Chemistry, have two wheels and a central chassis. Others, including that developed by the Spanish team from the Nanoscience IMDEA, have four wheels attached to a chassis. Those of the Japanese and French-Japanese teams have two wheels with paddles, and a foot at the back to protect the chassis from being crushed against the track’s surface. A dipole moment can be included in the frame via a small chemical grouping located at the front of the molecule. The prototype from Ohio University has two enormous wheels attached to a narrow chassis. The latter remains an essential feature regardless of the vehicle’s chemical structure. By raising the molecular structure to which the wheels or paddles are attached, the chassis reduces the molecule-car’s interactions with the track’s surface.
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I can’t find a specific start time but the 2nd NanoCar Race will be livestreamed for 24 hours March 24 – 25, 2022 on the event’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQixqt0xegeVEmo9y9gMXQ.

For the curious, I recommend reading the March 7, 2022 CNRS press release in its entirety.

Finally, this is my fourth posting about this race. For the diehards:

July 9, 2020 Getting ready for the next nano Grand Prix in 2021
December 18, 2020 Next-gen Rice University nanocars for Second international Nanocar Race (it’s been bumped to 2022)
December 28, 2021 2nd international Nanocar Race to be broadcast live in March 2022

Enjoy race day!

I gather they’re sticking to 2022 as the year for the second race as first mentioned in my December 18, 2020 posting “Next-gen Rice University nanocars for Second international Nanocar Race (it’s been bumped to 2022).”

A November 17, 2021 news item on Nanowerk announces the inclusion of a team called NANOHISPA from IMDEA Nanociencia (Institute of Advanced Studies in Nanoscience, a private non-profit foundation initiated by the regional government of the community of Madrid [Spain]),

The nanomechanics at IMDEA Nanociencia are getting ready their engines for the international Nanocar Race II. The research groups led by David Écija and Emilio M. Pérez at IMDEA Nanociencia (Madrid) will participate in the second edition in Toulouse, March 2022.
The Nanocar Race is the world’s smallest car race covering the longest distance possible on a gold track for 24 hours, where the vehicles are molecules driven by the interaction with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
The overarching goal of the competition is to advance the development of nanomachines capable of real work, like carrying molecular-scale cargo and facilitating nano-fabrication.

A November 16, 2021 IMDEA Nanociencia press release, which originated the news item, describes both the race and the team’s ‘car’ in more detail,

Not everyone can join this competition. After pre-registration, two years are given to each team to consolidate their molecular designs. Nanocar drivers use the tip of a STM microscope to help jolt their molecules along, typically by just a few nanometers each time, so that the nanocar race takes place on a very small scale. Touching however is forbidden. The vehicles must be drivable without mechanical push from the tip. The propulsion mechanism can be either inelastic (related to the excitation of vibrational modes or to current-induced structural changes) or dipolar, resulting from the repulsion or attraction between the nanocar and the STM tip. In the Nanocar Race II two sessions will happen, depending on the “weather” conditions: ambient or ultra-high vacuum.
With a lateral size of a few nanometers, a nanocar is a molecule with a distinguishable front and rear. Its chemical structure allows the nanocar to move on a surface when a STM tip is approached. The IMDEA Nanociencia’s NANOHISPA team joins the international group of certified teams in the ultra-high vacuum nanocar racing with their molecule “SPARC”, consisting on 70 well placed atoms. With rear wheels of toluene and front wheels of benzene, built on an anthracene chassis, the minimalistic hydrocarbon nanoarchitectonics of SPARC should help them navigate the speedway in a solid manner. This molecular design includes a permanent dipole moment “motor”: permanent dipoles make the car susceptible to electric field gradients, and can be used to propel and maneuver them. The small anthracene chassis keeps the weight at minimum, while its polyaromatic nature ensures sufficient downforce for fast cornering. Meanwhile, the benzene derivatives at the wheels allow little interaction with the gold track, promoting acceleration and top speed on the straights.
The nanocar SPARC will be driven by the NANOHISPA team with members of the research group of Prof. David Écija at IMDEA Nanociencia. The team of drivers, with Dr. Koen Lauwaet, Dr. Ana Sánchez, Dr. Ignacio Urgel and Dr. Ana Barragán, all led by Prof. David Écija, will go helmets on and fire the engines for the most exciting 24 hours in the nanoracing panorama. “The team has great expertise in molecular synthesis and scanning tunneling microscope manipulations” Prof. Rodolfo Miranda, director of IMDEA Nanociencia, says. The team is sponsored by the Specialised Group in Nanoscience and Molecular Materials (GENAM) from the Spanish Royal Society of Physics (RSEF) and the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), and by the company Scienta Omicron. The NANOHISPA team passed their rookie tests last October in an online meeting with the organizers in France.
The Écija’s and Perez’s groups will team up and travel to Toulouse for the race presentation during the C’NANO Conference 2021, on the 23^rd of November 2021. The event occurs in the year we celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the STM microscope invention. All the Nanocar Race II teams officially registered will present their first molecule-car prototype to the public during the MEMO satellite workshop “Single molecule mechanics on a surface: gears, motors and cars”.
The 2nd international Nanocar Race [sic; Note: This appears to be a link to the first international Nanocar Race website; link to 2nd race after this excerpt] is organized on the framework of the European FET OPEN project MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules). The competition will be broadcasted live from Toulouse in March, 2022. The First Nanocar Race was held in Toulouse in April 2017, and was followed live by more than 100.000 people on the NanoCarRace Youtube channel. On this occasion, a greater attention to this event is expected. All teams will compete at the same time in the same room in Toulouse, controlling their nanocars remotely.
8 drivers. 24 hours. Don’t miss out another incredible edition of the Nanocar Race.

As mentioned in the press release, the 2nd international Nanocar race is being organized by the European FET [Future and Emerging Technologies] OPEN project MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 joint funding programme.

For information about the Nanocar Race II, also known as, the 2nd international Nanocar Race, see this webpage on the MEMO website. You can find the NanoCarRace Youtube channel here.

The NANOHISPA team has made an animation of their nanocar SPARC,

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Tag Archives: MEMO (Mechanics with Molecules)

Start your engines! The second international NanoCar race returns to Toulouse (France) on 24-25 March, 2022

2nd international Nanocar Race to be broadcast live in March 2022