Nanomachines driven by thermal bath

Zhiping Xu, Quanshui Zheng

Published 2006-06-12Version 1

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes based nanomachines driven by thermal bath are proposed in this Letter. Atomistic simulation shows that intershell translational and rotational motion can be activated at sufficiently high temperature, where the van der Waals potential barrier is accessible by the thermal fluctuation. The thermal fluctuation is further identified to be consistent with the equipartition theorem. This model can be used to construct one dimensional devices driven by thermal bath or nano-channels for molecule transport.