Biological powered: A pear-shaped microbe, a millionth of a meter long glides over a distance equivalent to a 6-foot-tall runner moving at 20 mph. Researchers built circular pathways coated with sugary proteins and yoked the genetically modified microscopic critter with vitamin B7 to a cog of a rotor.
The Rotor, a fifth the diameter of a hair, is powered by the bacteria; 20,000 rotors can fit on one silicon chip. The rotors can spin at 1.5 to 2.6 revolutions per minute.
Here is where it gets a little weirder.
To avoid the biohazard of live, genetically altered bacteria breaking free from their microscopic hamster wheels, researchers suggest that dead ones will carry out their mission if given the right organic compounds.
Bacteria powered motors might power a lab-on-a-chip device or an electronic generator system which could generate electricity from an abundant chemical source like glucose in the human body. Bacteria-powered motors also work in a wet environment which is hostile to other types of motors.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14560502/from/ET/
http://www.livescience.com/nanotechnology/
Watch a video of these motors in action
http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=TinyDriver
A car so small that 20,000 of them can be parked on the tip of a human hair.
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/nanotechnology/dn9004-nanocar-gets-an-engine.html
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