doi: 10.3850/S201042862015001325

Nanoscale Soft Gear Based On Chiral Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Yilun Liu State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures,
School of Aerospace, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China yilunliu@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

ABSTRACT

Gear plays an important role in the machine systems. With different types of gear we can achieve different types of motion transformation, such as speed change, translation to rotation, etc. But,as the devices shrink to nanoscale, the friction and adhesion will become dominant.So,up to now there are only works to demonstrate the nanoscale gears. And in these nanoscale gears, the motion transformation is usually realized by the hard contact of the nano-devices. In this work we have proposed a new type of nanoscale soft gear which is constructed by the chiral Multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT). Due to the different chiral angles between the inner tubes and the outer tubes, the minimum potential energy path between the inner tubes and the outer tubes is a helical curve, so that the rotation motion is generated during sliding of the inner tubes. Besides, the interlayer interaction of carbon nanotube is van der Waals which is very soft and is beneficial to avoid the wear in nanoscale.

Keywords: Chiral multi-walled carbon nanotubes, Noncontacted gear, van der Waals interaction, NEMS.

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