Scaling functional machines down to the molecular scale is a key challenge in nanoscale science and technology. However, coaxing individual molecules into performing well-defined mechanical tasks requires radically different strategies than those used to build familiar macroscopic machines like electrical motors.

Motor proteins deliver intracellular cargo to specific locations inside cells. These so-called kinesin motors take 8 nm steps along intracellular highways 25 nm wide called microtubules. This transport machinery can be reassembled outside the cell and used to transport nanoscale cargo for separations, sensors, assembly, and other bio-mechanical devices.

Electric-field tunable spin valves are being investigated Exchange bias at ferromagnet/multiferroic interfaces has been studied for various thin film and bulk multiferroics including BiFeO3, TbMnO3, LuMnO3, and Cr2O3. Tunable spin valve structures are being explored. Magnetoresistance devices using BiFeO3 as the exchange biasing layer have been demonstrated.

Perfect rings of C60 molecules, lined up around circular layers of silver, reveal an important property of nanoelectronic contacts: thermal energy causes the structures to fluctuate. The movement of the molecules in the rings is captured by making repeated ("time-lapse") STM images.

Magnetic thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) have special attributes for explorations and perpendicular magnetic recording. We have observed three hitherto unknown new features in materials with PMA: 1. Asymmetrical domain nucleation centers that produce domains for only one magnetization direction (Fig. 1). 2. The backward domain wall motion of the asymmetrical nucleation centers is much faster than that of the forward motion. 3. Magnetic domains with a fixed boundary but fading contrast.

Thin-film transistors, already indispensable in a number of portable electronics, would benefit from optical transparency and compatibility with flexible, lightweight plastics. Transistors with these qualities would be a major advance if they could be fabricated by a scalable, large-area process.

We developed a low-pressure magnetron sputtering technique together with the linear dynamic deposition method and successfully fabricated a new type of magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) with (001) textured MgO barrier. We are the only US university to have achieved this success as of April 2007.

Members of IRG-I of the MIT MRSEC have recently demonstrated wireless transfers of power on the order of 60W over distances greater than 7 feet, with efficiency of roughly 50%, confirming the predictions of an earlier theoretical paper. The power transfer scheme proposed, dubbed "WiTricity," could be used for wireless charging of autonomous electronic devices (e.g. laptops, cell-phones, iPods).