Assembly of Nano-Machines Mimics Human Muscle

[TECH NEWS]

For the first time, an assembly of thousands of nano-machines capable of producing a coordinated contraction movement extending up to around ten micrometers, like the movements of muscular fibers, has been synthesized by a CNRS team from the Institut Charles Sadron. This innovative work, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone, professor at the Université de Strasbourg, and involving researchers from the Laboratoire de Matière et Systèmes Complexes (CNRS/Université Paris Diderot), provides an experimental validation of a biomimetic approach that has been conceptualized for some years in the field of nanosciences. This discovery opens up perspectives for a multitude of applications in robotics, in nanotechnology for the storage of information, in the medical field for the synthesis of artificial muscles or in the design of other materials incorporating nano-machines (endowed with novel mechanical properties). The work has been published in the online version of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

 October 23, 2012, ScienceDaily / Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)