Tapping Tiny Pores: Nanovalves control chemical releases

Cells readily manufacture the nanoscale valves, pumps, and other gadgets that make life work. For human researchers, fabricating devices in the nanometer range is anything but easy.

That didn’t stop chemist Thoi D. Nguyen and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from building arrays of nanovalves, each made from a single molecule.