2024-10-07 - 2024-10-11
Peer Fischer
Heidelberg University
Inspired by the wonderful nanomachinery one finds in nature, many scientists dream of building motors, swimmers and machinery at the smallest of scales. This course will explore the underlying nanoscience and discuss possible applications. The topics range from the strange world of low Reynolds number fluid phenomena and how bacteria swim, to the underlying principles that are used by protein motors, to synthetic systems that have no direct analogue in nature. These include chemical motors, which hold promise in nanomedicine, as well as systems built with DNA origami, or by conventional nanofabrication methods. We will discuss whether the idea Feynman mentions in his famous lecture ‘There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom’, namely the possibility that tiny machines would allow one to simply ‘swallow the surgeon’, is already possible or what it may take to realize it. In all of the examples, the focus is on the underlying physical principles and the implications for the experimental realization of nanomotors.
