Not quite Le Mans: 24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron

Enlarge / Two views of hardware from the world’s largest electron microscope, which loomed over the event. (credit: Dhananjay Khadilkar)

C₆₄H₂₂CuF₆N₄: it is both a chemical formula and the technical specification of a car that won the 24-hour race held recently in France. No, not the one in Le Mans. This particular event, Nanocar Race II—dubbed “the race of the smallest cars in the world”—was held in Toulouse, with eight teams fielding cars of nanometric dimensions.

Each car was essentially a molecule. The race-winning C₆₄H₂₂CuF₆N₄ molecule, measuring three nanometers in length long and one nanometer in width, traveled a distance of one micron (1 billionth of a meter) in 24 hours, the longest distance in the competition.

The wining car/molecule. (credit: Dhananjay Khadilkar)

The car was developed by the NIMS-MANA team from Tsukuba, Japan. Jonathan Hill, the team’s constructor leader, was pleasantly surprised by the result. “We hadn’t done so well in the first edition of the race in 2017. We didn’t expect to finish in the top three this time,” Hill told Ars Technica.