Plasmonic Nanomachines: Creating Local Potential Gradients and Motions

Humanity has developed a wide range of physical machines engineered to perform work for specific purposes while emphasizing controllability and upscaling. Recently, a growing aspiration has emerged to construct minuscule mechanical systems, often enabled by a microscopic, bottom-up understanding of nature. As biological systems inherently function at sub-micrometer scales, artificial nanoscale machines have attracted increasing attention as a route to achieve nature-like synthetic and functional precision. Among the possible strategies to activate and drive such systems, light stands out as a highly efficient and versatile energy source that can interact strongly with plasmonic nanomaterials. Owing to strong optical responses, efficient photothermal conversion, and catalytic activity, plasmonic nanostructures can transduce light energy into spatially confined optical, thermal, and chemic…