Miri MirFaez, Etesami Zahra
Department of Physics, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 14395-547, Tehran, Iran.
Phys Rev E. 2016 Aug;94(2-1):022147. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.94.022147. Epub 2016 Aug 29.
We study a nanoscale machine composed of a rack and a pinion with no contact, but intermeshed via the lateral Casimir force. We adopt a simple model for the random velocity of the rack subject to external random forces, namely, a dichotomous noise with zero mean value. We show that the pinion, even when it experiences random thermal torque, can do work against a load. The device thus converts the kinetic energy of the random motions of the rack into useful work.
