A nanotube contracts when heated and expands when cooled.
From images provided by Zhegang Huang/Seoul National University
A new nanotube expands and contracts with temperature changes. It’s the first pulsating nanostructure more complicated than a sphere, researchers say.
Building nanostructures is one challenge. Getting them to move on demand is another. Here's why that motion might matter: Say scientists loaded a nanotube with medicine and sent it searching your body for a cancer cell. Once the tube found the cell, it could park outside and let the drugs leak out. To chemists, this delivery strategy is the molecular equivalent of a mailman parking the truck outside your house until wind blows your mail on your front lawn. Your mail may not even arrive at your house, if it fell out of the truck earlier in the day.
But if the nanotube carrier could expand and contract on demand, it could spit out the drugs. This molecular mailman could push packages out of the truck. That transforms the tube from just a container to a working delivery system.
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