ANTs, World's Tiniest Engines Could Cause Medical Turnaround

The world's smallest engines have been built by scientists at the University of Cambridge. Called ANTs for actuating nano-transducers, these engines are powered by light. ANTs are potential medical game changers, as they could one day be used for drug transport, combat diseases and conduct surgery, reports said.

The process of building the ANTs was documented in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Besides using light to power up the tiny engines, the scientists said that these potentially offer unusually large force or mass.

The scientists said that while nanoactuators and nanomachines have long been desired, there have been crucial problems with force, control and power. They added that nanodevices might have been increasing in complexity, but fast mechanical operations are yet to be possible. 

The world's tiniest light-powered engines could revolutionize medicine #nanobots https://t.co/gMSvQcrxuX pic.twitter.com/m1DXeBkkSp

— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) May 3, 2016

How The ANTs Work

Gizmodo reported that the Ants work "a bit like a spring mechanism." ANTs have numerous charged gold nanoparticles that are held together by temperature-sensitive polymer gel which is heated by laser.

The gel expels all water in less than a second then collapses like a coiled spring. The gold nanoparticles are packed together and elastic energy is stored, Gizmodo added. The ANT will cool and the gel will re-absorb water to expand just as quickly. This will release the stored elastic energy that will then scatter the gold nanoparticles forcefully.

Next Step For ANTs

According to EurekAlert, the team that built the ANTs is cooperating with Cambridge enterprise and other companies to commercialize the technology for microfluidics bio-applications. The United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Research Council funded the project to build the ANTs.

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