Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what University of Michigan researchers call 'living rotating crystals' that could serve as a nanopump. They may also, incidentally, shed light on the origin of life itself.The researchers refer to the crystals as 'living' because they, in a sense, take on a life of their own from very simple rules.Sharon Glotzer, the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering, and her team found that when they spun individual nanoparticles in a simulation—some clockwise and some counterclockwise—the particles self-assembled into an intricate architecture.(a) Clockwise (A) and counterclockwise (B) spinners. (b) The ratio of translational to total kinetic energy κ indicates the presence of a phase transition (ω0=1).
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