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Mass transportation of thermally driven nanotube nanomotors with defects

Thermally driven nanotube nanomotors provide linear mass transportation controlled by a temperature gradient. However, the underlying mechanism is still unclear where the mass transportation velocity in experiment is much lower than that resulting from simulations. Considering that defects are common in fabricated nanotubes, we use molecular dynamics simulations to show that the mass transportation would be considerably impeded by the potential barriers or wells induced by the defects, which provides a possible picture to understand the relative low value at microscopic level. The optimal structure and the factors which would affect the performance are discussed. The result indicates considering defects is helpful in designing nanotube nanomotor and other new nanomotor-based devices.