The Joy of Discovery
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00:00
ChemistryNobeliumLecture/Conference
00:37
NobeliumMetabolic pathwayNeotenyChemistMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
01:13
AluminiumChemistMan pageLecture/Conference
01:45
Separation processIslandLeadElectronic cigarette
02:25
IslandGermanic peoplesAgricultureSystemic therapyNeotenyWalkingAusgangsgesteinLecture/Conference
03:12
MoleculeNeotenyExciter (effect)MoleculeAage
03:50
NobeliumMoleculeExciter (effect)Fatty acid methyl esterTopicityLactitolChemistryMeeting/Interview
04:22
NobeliumChemistryLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
04:53
WalkingLecture/Conference
05:32
PermacultureMaterials scienceChemistryPosttranslational modificationBiotechnologyMeeting/Interview
05:59
MoleculeChemistryBiosynthesisStorm surgeChemistryMoleculeChemical structureChemical synthesisFunctional groupDeterrence (legal)Recreational drug useLecture/Conference
06:30
Molecular modellingProteinBiosynthesisCultivatorRibosomeMolekulardynamikFlagellumMotion (physics)Recreational drug useChemistryMoleculeMachinabilityTransportSeparation processCell (biology)Process (computing)Functional groupFlagellumAlkeneProteinIce frontMolekulardynamikChemische SyntheseIsomerMaterials scienceBiochemistryCarbon (fiber)Systemic therapyComputer animation
08:33
MoleculeStorage tankSea levelNobeliumPainSystemic therapyCell (biology)MoleculeDeathMaterials sciencePlasticLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
09:49
MoleculeGemstoneLecture/Conference
10:21
Recreational drug useAssembly (demo party)Motion (physics)MoleculeMolekulardynamikNobeliumMachinabilityAssembly (demo party)Materials scienceElectronic cigaretteFrench friesMotion (physics)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
10:47
Ion channelNana (manga)ArzneimitteldosisWirkstofffreisetzungProteinMethansulfonylchloridSystemic therapyThermoformingCell (biology)Ion channelAdenomatous polyposis coliWine tasting descriptorsGenomeSea levelWursthülleIonenbindungPyranDyeingMoleculeComputer animation
11:27
Capsule (pharmacy)Recreational drug useIon channelCell (biology)WalkingRecreational drug useWine tasting descriptorsMaterials scienceLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
11:51
Recreational drug useMethansulfonylchloridIon channelProteinPharmaceutical drugResistenzCancerAntibacterialRecreational drug useAzobenzolWalkingAntibiotic resistanceMaterials scienceCancerRecreational drug useWine tasting descriptorsSea levelBenzeneProlineWursthülleAgeing
12:46
Systemic therapyChemotherapyActivity (UML)Lecture/Conference
13:14
AntibacterialResistenzBortezomibEnzyme inhibitorChemotherapyCell (biology)CancerMultiple myelomaActivity (UML)Cell growthSystemic therapyAntibacterialWursthülleAntibiotic resistanceEnzyme inhibitorElectronic cigaretteLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
14:07
Cell (biology)CancerMultiple myelomaEnzyme inhibitorChemotherapyAzo couplingWine tasting descriptorsActivity (UML)Antibiotic resistanceIntergranular corrosionFluorescenceRecreational drug useWalkingLecture/Conference
14:35
Activation energyRecreational drug useUltraviolettspektrumChemical compoundWalkingSystemic therapyDye penetrant inspectionPharmaceuticsMachinabilityFunctional groupComputer animation
15:08
Molekularer MotorSurface scienceAlkeneSurface scienceAzo couplingMachinabilityAlkeneFunctional groupMoleculeComputer animation
16:14
NobeliumHelixElasticity (physics)Chain (unit)Spawn (biology)Lecture/Conference
17:04
Molekularer MotorMotion (physics)CultivatorAdenineATPaseLeft-wing politicsMotion (physics)ZunderbeständigkeitComputer animation
17:37
Motion (physics)CultivatorChiralität <Chemie>WalkingLeft-wing politicsTeaSense DistrictMoleculeEschenmoser, AlbertLecture/Conference
18:19
Chemical bondMotion (physics)TuberculosisProcess (computing)Molekularer MotorData conversionProcess (computing)CultivatorDoppelbindungEnantiomereMethylgruppeIsomerHelixWalkingMotion (physics)Spinning (polymers)Chemical elementSense DistrictPotenz <Homöopathie>TuberculosisPhotochemistryGlassesIonenbindungChemical structureSubstitutionsreaktionChemistry
19:54
Process (computing)HelixPotenz <Homöopathie>Computer animationLecture/Conference
20:21
Molekularer MotorMolecular modellingMotion (physics)Drop (liquid)ZunderbeständigkeitMolekulardynamikMoleculeMacromoleculeMacromoleculeController (control theory)Surface scienceMoleculePolymerSea levelSystemic therapyComputer animation
20:59
MoleculeNobeliumSoft matterGlassesTin canSurface scienceColourantGemstoneSense DistrictWasserwelle <Haarbehandlung>Starvation responseMaterials scienceLecture/Conference
22:18
Molekularer MotorNobeliumMetalSurface scienceMoleculeMonolayer <Biologie>GoldQuartzMill (grinding)Dike (geology)WhitewaterLecture/ConferenceEngineering drawing
22:48
Materials scienceMill (grinding)Dike (geology)ColourantNeotenyGoldComputer animation
23:21
MoleculeTidal raceNeotenySeparation processDessert
23:59
MoleculeIsomerFreies MolekülMotion (physics)Data conversionCultivatorSurface scienceNana (manga)Translation <Genetik>Motion (physics)CultivatorMoleculeSea levelLecture/ConferenceComputer animation
24:57
Surface scienceNana (manga)Freies MolekülNobeliumCell (biology)Systemic therapyMoleculeComputer animationLecture/Conference
25:27
Surface scienceFreies MolekülNana (manga)NobeliumMoleculeSurface science
25:56
IronUric acidNobeliumWine tasting descriptorsIceMatchMetalScreening (medicine)Functional groupOrange juiceReaktionsgleichungBarbecueLakeBase (chemistry)Area
27:46
NobeliumWine tasting descriptorsSystemic therapyLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
28:13
GlucoseChemistryPropylthiouracil <6-Propyl-2-thiouracil>Wine tasting descriptorsSystemic therapyGlucoseMachinabilityChemistryEnzymeComputer animation
28:42
KohlenhydratchemieNana (manga)TumorKohlenhydratchemieCarbon nanotubeWaterGanglagerstätteCobaltoxideSystemic therapyEnzymeElectronic cigaretteSugarNanoroboticsGesundheitsstörungWalking
29:38
NanoroboticsMolekulardynamikMotion (physics)Catalytic converterMoleculeNobeliumWalkingRecreational drug useMoleculeAcetylcholinesteraseMaterials scienceMotion (physics)Chemical propertySoft matterComputer animation
30:24
ChemistryCope rearrangementFunctional groupSpeciesNobeliumErdrutschComputer animationLecture/Conference
30:48
Man pageSpeciesLecture/Conference
31:14
NobeliumComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:17
Thank you, Professor Lubitz, for the very kind words
00:21
of introduction. It's a real honor to be here amongst all these young stars and some senior stars. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's my first time indeed. And what I would like to talk a little bit about the joy of discovery, and I gave it the subtitle, The Art of Building Small.
00:42
We enjoy very much discoveries and the adventure in the unknown, and to make an Eureka moment when we follow a certain path. But what inspires me a lot is to provide challenges for our youth as they are here,
01:00
dreams for the people and opportunities for our industries because I'm a chemist and often, of course, we also cooperate with industries. So for me, it is enjoying the beauty of the molecular world. I'm a synthetic chemist. I make molecules, I design molecules, and I enjoy the beauty of the molecular world.
01:21
But of course, many times we get lost in this paradise of the molecular world. And then we get, we see some beautiful flowers here that we have never thought of, or we find questions because we all realize the question mark is the most important one in science, and we find these questions that we have never thought of.
01:41
And that gives us new ideas and new opportunities. So I, on the start of my journey, I want to go to this fellow, and several of you might know him. This is Abel Tasman. And he was born in a tiny village very close to Groningen where I live, just a few miles from where I live.
02:02
And as a young man, he went with his wooden ship and a few other fellows to the part of the world which was on no map. The unknown beyond any frontier with only courage, daring, and perseverance. And actually he got lost on his way to the Dutch Indies.
02:22
And luckily he didn't end up at the South Pole because we would never have seen him again. But he hit an island which was later called Darwin, sorry, the Tasmania, and then he moved on and he discovered New Zealand. And then finally he found the Dutch Indies. Courage, daring, and perseverance.
02:41
So my journey started also at the frontier, at the frontier of Holland and Germany where my father and mother had a farm and I grew up at the border region. And I learned to admire the beauty of nature through my parents. And from my early youth I had always a great inspiration I got from these beautiful natural systems.
03:02
And I made my first steps in these tiny wooden shoes on the farm because at that time we had wooden shoes. And I will come back to the wooden shoes in a second. Then my teachers, recently I met him, he is now way in his 70s, my high school teacher of the way who was a really inspiring person
03:22
who had one famous quote, I wish every child one good teacher during his youth. I had several, I was very lucky. Then I went to the university in Groningen. Some of you might recognize this university building. And my professor was Hans Winberg and he was American.
03:42
And this was my first molecule that was to say the first molecule that I made when I was 20 years old that nobody had made in the world according to Hans Winberg. And I got such a feeling of excitement that I had made the molecule that nobody had made ever in this world. And from that moment I decided to make molecules.
04:01
And so I got all kinds of advices when I was young. For instance, Harvey, a famous professor at Leiden University said, choose an important problem. And Hans Winberg being American said, if you want to write a book, write a book. That was his advice. I got also the advice to do my master
04:21
with a professor who said, this is way too difficult for you. I have a nice problem but it will take at least six or eight months to do standard chemistries and then maybe we can tackle that problem. I never choose that topic. Because Winberg said to me, and I left this room within five minutes and I knew I wanted to do that.
04:41
He said, this is something nobody has ever touched but you will do it. And he challenged me and it was fantastic to get that challenge. Of course you have to make choices but please follow your intuition. What gives you a good feeling?
05:00
And I always give the advice to young people, walk on two feet. Because nowadays it's very competitive to get grants. You need to get a publication now and then. So you can work on a problem which is so tough that in the next five years you will not have any result. Don't give up. Perseverance. But you might also want in parallel
05:22
to work on something which is a little bit less daring but gives you certainly a publication in two or three years and you have the possibility to get a grant and to build your career. So walk on two feet. So then you have also to make career choices and I tell this a little bit because these are the choices I made. I had the experience out of my comfort zone,
05:40
out of the university because I had to go in the army. Shell then recruited me, kept me out of the army and I got the fascination and the motivation for chemistries and for catalysis and for designing materials also at the Shell Laboratories in Amsterdam and the Bioscience Center in Sitting Barn in Canada. This was a great experience. But then I realized that my fascination for molecules
06:03
was such that I wanted to work on real new things that I could design my own with my students. So I went back to the university to build my own molecular world. And this is what I did during the past 30 years by doing chemical synthesis and in chemical synthesis of course as you all know we can build molecules from scratch
06:22
and design molecules with specific functions or just to admire the beautiful of a structure or to test a certain theory. And so chemistry is as we all know extremely good in making molecules from drugs to dyes, from cables to cars, the components of your smartphone.
06:40
But what we are not very good in is to design dynamic functions. And several of the heroes here in the front have been contributed to this fantastic biological machines and motors. So when you think about the rotary motor or the bio nano motors that do the transport in the cells, on the filaments or the ribosome, the beautiful protein machinery,
07:01
the bacteria flagella motor, I think this is fascinating when you see how nature came to that design to make a bacteria propel in this way. And then optical switching, probably the most ingenious switch that we know. The fact that I can see you and you can see me, a simple isomerization under the influence of light
07:22
around a carbon-carbon double bond. Very elementary process that we all learn in our first year undergraduate chemistry studies. And this is where I started with the idea to use to build dynamic functions because synthetic chemistry can make almost everything
07:40
except we are not very good in doing the dynamics that modern nature has invented. So I often get the question how does it feel working in this field? And I often have to refer to the Wright brothers. In the early days, 100 years ago, when people were saying why do we need to fly
08:01
because if God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings. Nobody had predicted that 100 years later we would build in Europe the Airbus or the Boeing 747 in the States. Of course, the three and a half million components are completely synthetic, artificial, and it does not fly like a bird. We would never get here.
08:20
Although we admire the bird, the flying principle and the materials are entirely different. But we should also be modest because 100 years later we are still not able to build a pigeon. We cannot build even a single cell of a pigeon or a part of the cell. So we started with the switching and the idea was to try to make
08:42
a digital information storage system based on the retinal system in the eye, but of course you cannot use dead molecules because they are not stable enough for this kind of devices. But you see there is a distinct difference in shape and so we thought let's make molecules that we switch with light and we make a 101010 digital information storage system.
09:04
The main problem that we were facing is of course fatigue, reversibility, and in particularly non-destructive readout because if you read out with the wavelengths where you do the switching, you lose all your information. So we made gyro molecules left-handed and right-handed and we took advantage of the unique gyralities
09:22
and we switched between gyralities so we can detect left and right easily out of the switching regime using optical techniques. And so together with the Philips company for instance in those early days, we built materials like plastics where we could write with lasers zeros and ones, zeros and ones, and then you read in the stories
09:42
about the promise of nanotechnology and we made a kind of a CD and you can store on one CD 240 years of music. At least that's the promise. Your grandparents and grandchildren, six generations can use one single CD continuously listen to music if we would be able to do this.
10:01
Of course we could switch. We could switch single molecules. It all works nicely. The only problem is when they are so densely packed, and I only talk about two-dimensional layers here, we don't know how to hit one molecule and to do fast reading and writing of course because you interfere. Of course this was a stepping stone to our programs in molecular electronics that we have pursued over the years
10:21
and we can make electronic devices and so, but here is still a real challenge for the young people. So we look at the modern nature and we look at dynamic systems. So how to create dynamic systems and in particularly the major challenge, how to push things out of equilibrium. And so we do assembly, trigger and response functions,
10:43
and motion to go to responsive materials, smart drugs, and ultimately molecular machines. So one of the systems that we designed is to take from nature the mechanosensitive channel from the Coli bacteria which is in the closed form normally but it can open due to pressure buildup in the cell and what we did is we engineered it
11:03
so that we put cysteines, so you can go to the level of the genome, you can put cysteines, you hook up a spiral pyran in this case which is a nice molecular switch, and then with light, the idea was that you generate here a splitter ionic molecule, a strong dipole, and then you get dipole-dipole repulsion
11:21
and you open the channel. We reconstituted in a physical, we loaded it up, we can open it with light, we can close it with light, so now we have a capsule that we can open this nano channel with light and deliver something like a drug or a self-healing material and this is of course one example to illustrate
11:42
how you can take advantage of parts from other nature, re-engineer it, build in this artificial switchable component, and then make these tiny capsules that can open and then hopefully maybe deliver a drug or be useful in self-healing materials. We went a step further to introduce switches into drugs
12:03
and you might say, why is he doing this? So normally when you take a drug, you hope it goes to your target in your body and doesn't have side effects, and we thought if we build in light switches, can we then do high precision therapeutic action to switch a drug on precisely on the spot?
12:21
And we focused on bacterial resistance and we all know it's a real problem in this world and getting a major problem and cancer treatment for chemotherapy to get higher levels of precision. So for instance, we took Cypro, we built in a azobenzene switch, we can switch the architecture of the azobenzene
12:40
going from a trans to a cis state, this is the off state, this is the on state, and indeed we can activate and deactivate the antibiotic with light. And the nice thing is that you can tune exactly the wavelengths, you can tune how stable it is, so we have systems that automatically go back
13:01
after 12 hours. So the dream is a little bit that you have an infection or a tiny tumor, the antibiotic or the chemo terapertigation doesn't do anything except there where you hit with the light and there you switch it on and you ride
13:20
more or less your biological activity in the cellular system or in the tissue. This works nicely with antibiotics, recently we have pushed it towards the regime of 700 nanometers, which is really important. Of course you can now pattern bacterial growth, you simply take a mask and you can grow bacteria and patterns and so using the advantage
13:41
that you can do activation with high temporal spatial position. So we can do, for instance, Bortezomib, this is an anti-tumor compound, we can switch the proteasome inhibition on and off, on and off with light. And we have several of these cases now that I have no time to discuss them all.
14:02
So this is approaches to avoid, to avoid antibiotic resistance buildup because if it leaves the body after 12 hours, there's no activity, the bacteria grow normal in our tests, we have not gone into patients, of course, it's still early days, but we are moving towards that.
14:21
The same we try to couple the sensitive, the very sensitive new imaging techniques like MRI fluorescence or PET MRI or PET fluorescence, we couple that information to activating the drugs on the spot. There's of course a few challenges there because you get high spatial temporal precision,
14:40
but of course before you have a pharmaceutical compound or something that works in the human body, you have a few steps to make, in particularly the near infrared light because with UV light it's dangerous and you cannot get very high penetration in the tissue, but with near infrared and we have these systems now, you get centimeters deep into your tissue
15:00
and that works. Now towards the motors, because we want to make a step further from switches towards really making things moving like motors and machines. And so let me show you the timeline. When I was a PhD student, I made this specific overcrowded alkenes that when I came back from Shell
15:22
and started my career at the university as an independent group leader, I published these car optical switches that I showed you before for information storage because I remembered that I had made these molecules and that maybe they were photo active and it worked out so beautiful. So you could switch back and forth. But switching back and forth is not a motor
15:43
because for a rotary motor as we have designed, you have to move forward in a certain direction. And it took us eight years that we found our first rotary motor. And then it took another couple of years before we assembled them on surfaces and we could see something really moving and we built the nano car
16:00
and we built all kinds of machines. And so I will discuss a little bit of these discoveries with you in the next 10, 15 minutes. We found this motor a little bit by accident, I must say, because I told you that we were switching from left to right, right to left,
16:21
with different wavelengths of light. We could change the elasticity, the garellity. And at a certain moment, my students discovered that instead of switching the elasticity, elasticity stayed the same. P-elicity and P-elicity. But we were sure it was switching with light. That's impossible.
16:41
But then we thought, would it be that we have a double inversion? Helix change, helix change. Because then you go from P to M to P to M. And then we did all the experiments and we figured out that it worked. And when you have 180 degree rotation, so instead of switching back, it was moving forward. When you have 180 degree rotation repeated,
17:00
you have a 360 degree rotation. So it was a bit serendipitous. So this is the ATPase motor, which gives us a lot of inspiration. I would argue this is the most fantastic motor in the world that exists. And but you see, there goes something in and out. It rotates and it rotates in a particular direction. Now how to manage to get such a rotary motor
17:24
at a nanoscale, at a molecular scale? What are the fundamental questions? And the fundamental questions of us, how to control rotary motion and how to control to distinguish left and right. Now you know already how I distinguish left and right because I showed you that I grew up
17:41
with the small wooden shoes. And we all suffer occasionally that we make the mistake with left and right and step in the wrong shoe. Students, I was a student, and sometimes when you had a heavy night, it happened to me, you know, and I only realized when I made several meters. But when, as a small child,
18:01
you step in the wrong wooden shoe, that hurts so much, you never make that mistake again during your whole life. You know exactly what right and left means. Guirality is a signature of life, according to Albert Eschenmoser. And we take advantage of the Guirality, of course, in our design.
18:20
So here is the rotary motor. You see here an axle. You see a rotor. It spins in a unidirectional sense because it's a homogonal molecule, one single enantiomer. We can make it spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. It's powered by light, and it rotates continuously in a unidirectional sense as long as you irradiate with light.
18:41
It's a power stroke motor. It goes through four stages. A very fast double bond isomerization, which is, of course, like the process in your eye, it's extremely fast, and it's the photochemical isomerization. Then a thermal helix inversion, photochemical isomerization, the thermal helix inversion. So four steps add up to a 360 degree rotary cycle.
19:03
Four steps, 360 degree rotary cycle. Why do we call it a motor? Because it's controlled motion. There's consumption of energy. It is directional movement, and it's a repetitive process. Think of your car. If there's no fuel, you wouldn't get anywhere.
19:21
If there's equal probability going forward and backward, you wouldn't get anywhere either. So these aspects are really crucial, and of course, it should be continuous. Otherwise, it's a switch. It does it once and then can go backwards. Why does it rotate unidirectional? The reason is we have the helical structure,
19:40
and we have the stereocenters here, the methyl substituents, and these two stereochemical elements dictate that it can only go in one direction, because if we hit it with light, you go to an unstable state, and this unstable state, it cannot go back, but it can stabilize itself by moving forward by doing this helix inversion that I show you here,
20:02
and it's illustrated here in this movie. So there is a drive. The light powers it. It gives the energy to get to an unstable situation, and then it moves forward because it wants to stabilize itself thermodynamically, and this process is repeated twice.
20:21
Now, the original design was not very good. It moved only once an hour, and that's not much of a motor. You cannot do much with it, but then in the past, say, decade, we have designed 50 or 60 different designs, and we have enhanced the speed from one rotation an hour to more than 10 million rotations per second now. So we have everything in between,
20:42
so we can tune it to a specific application. We can put it on surfaces to control molecular phenomena in mesoscopic systems, macromolecules so we can have polymers that we can contract and expand and change polymer electricity, and we have movement at a single molecular level. So first, this was a really eureka moment,
21:05
and I still remember exactly quarter past five in 2004. We found this. My students came to me and said, Ben, you have to come to the lab to look at this, and this was the first time that I saw something moving
21:20
by just switching on the lamp. What we did is we took a liquid crystal material, so a tin film, micrometer tin film. This is a soft material. We put in the molecular motor only 1% a tiny amount, and we put a glass rod on it. So this is typically the surface what you get when you take the glass plate away from your smartphone.
21:41
Don't do it because you destroy your smartphone, but this is the soft material. You see, it's like waves on the sea, and we put a glass rod on top of it, micrometer inside, so it's 10,000 times the size. We hit it with light, and this is what happens. So the whole surface changes spontaneously. You see the surface architecture changes. The object is rotating in a unidirectional sense.
22:03
We can spin it clockwise or counterclockwise. You see also the color changes. We can make color pixels, but this is our stepping stone to make responsive soft surfaces and materials, and you can see it rotates without touching. Then we put it on surfaces because that was crucial,
22:22
and it took us many years, and I put here perseverance. It took us 10 years to learn all the techniques, to get single molecules on surfaces as a monolayer to determine exactly that they were all rotating unidirectional, that we had two legs instead of one leg because if you have only one leg,
22:40
the whole propeller is rotating, and we could build them on gold surfaces. We could build them on quartz and on many surfaces in the meantime. So we built a nano windmill park getting, of course, inspiration from our ancestors in Holland that 500 years ago built these beautiful mills on the dike. We made them a billion times smaller.
23:00
So these are these nano windmills assembled on gold, and they all move in the same direction when you hit them with light. And this, of course, is not to build a windmill, but it's meant to build responsive surfaces and materials. So maybe in the future you have your windows that clean themselves, or you have this wall here that changes color or adapts to your mood.
23:21
Then we built a nano car, and here I had to bring the expertise of a whole team together, different backgrounds of young people, because we took the challenge. And we are not engineers. My students were a little bit jealous of the engineers at the engineering schools because they go to Australia every year for this car race,
23:44
this solar-powered car race over several thousands of miles through the desert. And so I said, okay, then we decided, let's build a nano car. It's just a billion times smaller. And I promised them, if you succeed, you can go to Australia to a nice conference.
24:03
So we decided to build a four-wheel drive. So the wheels are the motors. As you can see, rotary motors, we had to build the chassis, and we wanted to move it over a surface apart. It took us another seven years to build it. So the first-generation students never made it to Australia
24:21
before they finished their PhD. But we finished, and here is one of our designs. So you see here the chassis, the wheels. This is the motor. And of course, and then we pulsed it with an STM tip to energize it and to get it moving autonomously. Of course, it had nothing to do with building a nano car. The fundamental scientific question was,
24:41
can you move something, translational motion, by converting rotary motion into translational motion, and can we see that at a single-molecule level? And here it is. If it moves, why doesn't it move? Oh, now it moves.
25:00
So this is a single car moving, as you can see. This is the design. And here you see a model, how it is on the surface. Because remind you that a nano in the nano world, in the molecular world, as we know so well from biology, it's different from movement on your road here, or the bus that brought us this morning.
25:22
On your filaments in your cell, the molecules don't roll like a car. And our system also, if you have a big molecule, it will stick to a surface, of course. So we were lucky that we had these wheels, which were again the motors, and it lifted the whole molecule a little bit, and that made it possible that it can do this movement,
25:41
as you have seen there in real time. It moves over the surface. So it's kind of a stepping movement over the surface. And currently my students are now building nano roads to move, say, objects from one place to the other. So that took us seven years and 10 years
26:01
to accomplish these last two projects. And then you might say, look, are these people always working in the lab? And of course you have to work hard, otherwise you will never get there. But also find a good balance. I would advise to the young people here. So you can even get in nature by organizing a barbecue.
26:21
Because in 2006, there was the Netherlands-Argentina match in the world championships, a very famous match. And you see here in Groningen, although it's spelled a bit wrong, the staff and students of the researchers from the Feregut Synthetic Organic Chemistry Lab have enjoyed their annual barbecue at the base boss home.
26:41
And at the big screen, they follow the Netherlands-Argentina match. Even those come from neither country are pretty excited. This lady is a PhD student from Thailand, and this guy was a PhD student from Italy. And you see they dress even up in orange. And we had a great time, and they were yelling for the Dutch team.
27:01
And in Argentina at the same time, also the work in the lab had stopped. And you see they watched also the Argentina-Netherlands football team. So I got in nature with this barbecue. But of course, we also go every year, we go with the group, we go out, we have a week out, we invite speakers, we go sailing, or we do hiking, or we do other events.
27:22
And when does Ben Ferenga stop his research? There's only one real reason that I stop. And then is when in the Frisian area in the northern part of Holland, there is ice on the lakes and the canals. Because then I go for skating, ice skating, long distance skating, and you see I earned this medal. And the medal from Stockholm is really fantastic.
27:42
But I must say, in Holland, maybe this is more precious even. So discover your talents, I would say. Follow your dreams, be confident. Discover what is your energy. Where do you get a passion? And discover your limits. How high do you set the bar?
28:01
And this is what we tried with our nano car, for instance, to see if we could really make something moving. So this adventure in the unknown, in the last two minutes, I will show you one adventure where I was challenged so much. And we discussed it with the students and we thought, shall we do it or not? And they said, look, this is all nice, but how do you get this light in your body?
28:21
Now we know how to get light in a body. But can you do a propulsion system based on chemical propulsion? Like the motors, the machines in your body. And so we made a kind of a submarine. And we thought, what will be then the fuel? And so we considered then glucose as a fuel.
28:40
So to have a kind of an autonomous system. And here it is, you see, we built nanotubes. We put catalyst or enzymes on it. They work in concept, so this is a multi-component system. They have all to be fine-tuned. And then you see a tiny spider of these nanotubes. And when you feed it sugar water, it autonomously propels without any touch.
29:02
This is no tricking, this is just under the microscope. You see these tiny bubbles? Because it converts sugar into water and oxygen at the end. And this is the oxygen bubbles. And as long as there's sugar water, it propels autonomously. Of course, there's not much directionality. We are working on it to steer it.
29:20
But yeah, we have a nano-swimmer. And it reminds us, of course, of the fantastic voyage. And the question now is, will in 30, 40, or 50 years, will the surgeon inject these tiny robots in your blood veins to search for a tumor cell to deliver a drug or do a repair? I don't know these nanorobots.
29:41
It's science or science fiction. We made the first steps. And you might decide how far you want to go. There's a lot to invent and to discover. I would say the best way to predict the future is to invent it, and that is what we all together do. So with that, I want to finish. So we go from programming molecules to make responsive and adaptive functions,
30:02
to motion and to dynamic systems, and that opens up a whole field of new opportunities from information systems and responsive materials, smart drugs, soft robotics, adaptive catalysts, et cetera. I can give you only a tiny flavor of the opportunities once you are able to control dynamic functions,
30:21
to introduce dynamic properties. With that, I want to close with not showing my young talents that made this possible. This is my team in the last 20 months or so. They are from 14 different countries, and I'm extremely grateful for them, for their talented, their creativity, and their hard work to make this all possible.
30:40
And I want to finish with my last slide because in the art of building small, the possibilities are fast. But let me go to my hero, Leonardo da Vinci, who said 500 years ago, when nature finishes producing its own species, man begins with the help of nature to create an infinity of species.
31:00
And to the young people here, all the young stars, imagine the unimaginable. Thank you so much.