A synthetic Brownian ratchet architecture for creating tailorable chemomechanical nanomachines

摘要

We present a Brownian ratchet architecture that enables tailorable chemomechanical transduction in synthetic nanomachine and transducer design. In order to test the architecture, we constructed topologically simple nanoscale devices that couple sensing, via molecular binding events, to both mechanical actuation and power harvesting. In these devices, the molecular species that both triggers actuation and supplies energy is selected through the choice of receptor molecule during design. Test devices were set to respond to a streptavidin ligand; for 1 μm and 2 μm long devices, we report an average of 62.8 nm and 140.5 nm, of directed motion, respectively.