Mettre cette molécule au travail ?

Abstract

We briefly retrace the story of how the Scanning Tunneling Microscope has allowed the molecule to establish its autonomy. Since the mid-1970s, the identity of a molecule has changed from being any interchangeable unit in a multitude of identical entities (for example a single molecule within a nanomaterial) to being a specific individual molecule operating as a calculating unit or as an autonomous source of motive power. The complex autonomous molecule-machine promises to allow us to exploit properties predicted by quantum physics in a different way from the effects that depend on a few photons or a single atom in a cavity