Convergent mechanical actuation

For adding up nanoscopic movement (speed / angular speed and force / torque) generated by chemical electrical or an other energy source to macroscopic movement there are multiple methods conceivable:

• interfacial drive (invented name)
• artificial motor-muscles
• hierarchical axles (invented name)
• ...

Interfacial drive

An interfacial drive has the same basic structure as an infinitesimal bearing with the layer structure made so much bigger that energy generation (conversion) and possibly storage can be incorporated. Interfacial drives create shear movement (transversal). The volume of the material stays constant.

Artificial motor-muscles

Details about them can be found on the "mokel" page. They can be used to create axial (longitudinal) shape changes. In operation the materials volume changes.

Hierarchical axles

A system of hierarchical axles would be a macroscopic axle by driven by n₁ sub axles each of which is driven by n₂ sub sub axles and so forth down to the lower physical size limit meaning axles built out of single DMMEs.

This design is more complicated than an interfacial drive since it has a much more complex fractal geometry and many layers at different size scales calling for different designs. All the axles from the third or fourth hierarchical layer from the bottom upwards will need to be supported by infinitesimal bearings. Evening out the speed difference on the contact points of intermeshing meso- to macroscopic gears in a similar fashion (drive contact) is another difficult problem.

To avoid gearing down to too low speeds some stages need to gear up as a countermeasure. There are more than eight inter-meshing gear contacts in series from the generators to the macroscopic load (or vice versa) thus this design only may make sense with the exceptionally high efficiency of nanomechanical gears compared to macroscopic gears.