Nano-Sized Light Mill Drives Micro-Sized Disk

Filmed through water, a silica microdisk embedded with a gold, gammadion-shaped light mill nanomotor rotates in one direction under illumination from laser light at 810 nanometers wavelength. When the wavelength is switched to 1,715 nanometers, the rotational direction is reversed. Torque is produced when the laser light frequencies resonate with the frequency of the metal’s plasmons. (Movie courtesy of Zhang group)