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Investigators from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) has discovered a new way to control up to a limit unprecedented movements of objects at the nanoscale. The investigation, which is published in the latest issue of Science, offers new opportunities for development and improvement of many nanotechnology applications such as nanosensors to detect masses so small that the nucleus of an atom.

The research was led by Adrian Bachtold researcher, group leader of the Quantum Nanoelectronics Research Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology CIN2 (CSIC Joint and ICN), in Bellaterra, Barcelona. Bachtold and his colleague, Daniel Garcia Sanchez and Benjamin Lassagne have enjoyed the cooperation of Yury Tarakanov and Jari Kinarett, scientists at the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg (Sweden).

To develop the study, the team used a device based on a carbon nanotube (with a diameter of a nanometer, a billionth meter) suspended in the air and set at the ends of two pieces of gold. This provision allows the nanotube to function as a resonator, as if the string of a guitar.

Bachtold contextualizes the study: "The oscillation of the nanotube can be 10 picometros (billionth of a centimeter), which makes it very difficult to detect and control. However, in contrast with mechanical oscillators of other materials, the movement the carbon nanotube can be refined through electronics. "These nanomaterials, in addition to swing, they can act as transistors. Thus, the device designed by the team, the electrons flow from one piece of gold to another through the nanotube.

Following this premise, researchers have found that this flow of electrons is strongly coupled with the mechanical movement of the nanotube, allowing them to control the swing to a new limit. To this end, the device cooled to a temperature below 270 degrees centigrade. In this way, succeeded in passing through the nanotube electrons one by one. "Every time an electron jumps to the nanotube, turn on him and caused his departure," adds the researcher, CSIC.

Among many other applications, the discovery could be the basis for developing ultrasensitive nanosensors capable of monitoring elements as small as the chemical reactions that occur in individual molecules.

Previous work, including equipment Bachtold, had found that the mass sensors based on carbon nanotubes to detect zeptogramos masses close to 1.4, just over one thousandth of one millionth of one millionth of one millionth of a gram . Science published research that opens the door to the development of devices with sensitivities to reach the 0.001 zeptogramos, the mass of the nucleus of the atom.