After imaging single atom and molecule, after single atom and molecule manipulation, we are entering in a new cycle in science where the experimental bench is now an atomic clean surface of a solid and the apparatus are of the size of a molecule that is well below the macromolecular assembly scale selected by mother Nature to create life. We are now experimenting with a single molecule in mechanics (molecular rotor, molecular wheel-barrow,), in electronics (electron transport along a single molecule, energetic of molecular switching) and in transduction (tunnel heating).

For technology, are certain machines reducible to the size of a single molecule? This miniaturisation of a computer or of a mechanical robot will require specific new technologies able (1) to permit information exchange between the operator and a given molecule and (2) to support “monumentalization” that is the assembly of many of those molecules to build very complex machines at the nanoscale.  Those new technologies like nano-communications and picotechnologies have still to be developed.

For molecular machines to work in other environments than on the surface of a solid, the experiment is in pursuing on the membrane of a cell, in the interior of a cell or in a molecular trap for a 3D manipulation of a single molecule.