The Dresden Training for the International nanoCar race (Vol. 48 No. 2)
To prepare its participation to the first international nano-car race in Toulouse (France) Spring 2017, the Dresden Team exercised on the Toulouse LT-UHV 4-STM reconfigured for the race with 4 independent controllers (one per scanning tunneling microscope (STM)). An Au(111) surface was prepared over a full gold substrate. A 90 nm long race track with two turns was selected on this surface following the rules (www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race). The Dresden windmill molecule-vehicles were deposited in ultrahigh vacuum conditions, imaged, and manipulated by any one of the 4 tips on race track reaching a 5 nm per hour driving speed,-including the STM image recording after each driving bias voltage pulse. Strategies for a safe and fast driving were established by the Dresden team along the Au(111) surface fcc rafter together with the possibility to repair crashed molecules, for example during the negotiation of a turn. The teams registered for the nano-car race will benefit from this atomic-scale, single-molecule-vehicle driving experience to improve their own driving strategy.
F. Eisenhut, C. Durand, F. Moresco, J.-P. Launay and C. Joachim, Training for the 1st international nano-car race: the Dresden molecule-vehicle, Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 76, 10001 (2016).
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