Are Subatomic Cities in our Future?

James Tour and his students at Rice University have created vehicles only slightly bigger than strands of DNA…

The inventor of a car slightly wider than a strand of DNA took the top prize in nanotechnologies this week. James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University, won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology for his nanocar, which is four nanometers across and includes a chassis with an engine, a pivoting suspension and rotating axles attached to rolling buckyball wheels, each made of 60 carbon atoms.

Tour and his team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers not only built a car, but also constructed a nanotruck capable of carrying a payload. Asked why he did it, Tour’s answer was simple: so that we can someday construct buildings and other large objects with molecular-size vehicles.

Until now, engineers have built things by taking larger objects and cutting them down to make smaller ones, Tour said. For example, trees are cut down to make tables, and as such, large silicon wafers are cut away to make transistors. But in the future, things will be built not from the top down, but the bottom up — as in nature.