The NanoCar Race II took place at CEMES on March 24 and 25. For the occasion, in the framework of the European project MEMO, eight international teams, including one from our laboratory, were at the start of this 24-hour competition which was controlled from the iconic Boule: it is indeed from there that the eight teams remotely piloted their molecule, which remained in their laboratory, in the ultra-high vacuum and ultra-cold of a scanning tunneling microscope.
Two teams finished ex-aequo. The Japanese of Tsukuba have largely beaten the speed record of the event by crossing the micrometer (1054 nanometers traveled). The Spanish-Swedish team from the Universities of Madrid and Lindköping managed to advance 678 nanometers but joined the first step in the game of bonus points (maneuvers, changes of path on the track, etc.).
The third place goes to the University of Strasbourg, whose team was led by a former CEMES PhD student.
The French (CEMES)-Japanese team finished sixth with 150 nanometers covered, well beyond the 100 nanometers they had set themselves.
The final ranking is as follows:
To relive all the race, here is the video of the 25 hours of live broadcast made from Japan by the NIMS-MANA Team of the university of Tsukuba, co-winner of the race. This broadcast was mainly based on the images broadcasted live from the Boule on a specific channel alternating interviews of the participants, analysis of the race, various subjects explaining the chemistry and physics questions, etc.
This 24-hour program broadcast from the Boule is available in 3 episodes:
Part 1: "Departure and race, 24/03/2022"
Part 2: "Night Session: 24-25/03/2022"
Part 3: "Morning and arrival 25/03/2022"
Last but not least, this article published before the race in the Journal du CNRS explains well the scientific stakes of this event whose media aspect made it possible to speak about this science of the infinitely small in which the Tsukuba molecule of the Nanocar Race would need 2.8 million years to travel a kilometer...
To relive all the race, here is the video of the 25 hours of live broadcast made from Japan by the NIMS-MANA Team of the university of Tsukuba, co-winner of the race. This broadcast was mainly based on the images broadcasted live from the Boule on a specific channel alternating interviews of the participants, analysis of the race, various subjects explaining the chemistry and physics questions, etc.
This 24-hour program broadcast from the Boule is available in 3 episodes:
Part 1: "Departure and race, 24/03/2022"
Part 2: "Night Session: 24-25/03/2022"
Part 3: "Morning and arrival 25/03/2022"
Last but not least, this article published before the race in the Journal du CNRS explains well the scientific stakes of this event whose media aspect made it possible to speak about this science of the infinitely small in which the Tsukuba molecule of the Nanocar Race would need 2.8 million years to travel a kilometer...