A Light-Driven Plasmonic Motor

From IEEE Spectrum:

For decades, scientists have known that photons possess enough linear and angular momentum to turn a pinwheel-shaped dielectric, so long as the pinwheel is the right size and light enough. Exactly how this works remains unclear, and so far these motors, called light mills, have been too weak to be useful outside the laboratory. But a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has now developed a light-driven nanosize motor that addresses the limitations of earlier light mills.

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