{"id":222147,"date":"2025-09-19T03:25:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/new-light-powered-gears-fit-inside-a-strand-of-hair"},"modified":"2025-09-19T03:25:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T08:25:02","slug":"new-light-powered-gears-fit-inside-a-strand-of-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/new-light-powered-gears-fit-inside-a-strand-of-hair","title":{"rendered":"New light-powered gears fit inside a strand of hair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-light-powered-gears-fit-inside-a-strand-of-hair2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have made light-powered gears on a micrometer scale. This paves the way for the smallest on-chip motors in history, which can fit inside a strand of hair. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-62869-6\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>Gears are everywhere\u2014from clocks and cars to robots and wind turbines. For more than 30 years, researchers have been trying to create even smaller gears in order to construct micro-engines. But progress stalled at 0.1 millimeters, as it was not possible to build the drive trains needed to make them move any smaller.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from Gothenburg University, among others, have now broken through this barrier by ditching traditional mechanical drive trains and instead using <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/laser+light\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">laser light<\/a> to set the gears in motion directly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have made light-powered gears on a micrometer scale. This paves the way for the smallest on-chip motors in history, which can fit inside a strand of hair. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. Gears are everywhere\u2014from clocks and cars to robots and wind turbines. For more [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}