In 2002, a seminal paper on Brownian motors published in the American Institute of Physics magazine Physics Today, "Brownian motors", by Dean Astumian and Peter Hänggi. There, they proposed the then novel concept of Brownian motors and posited that "thermal motion combined with input energy gives rise to a channeling of chance that can be used to exercise control over microscopic systems". Astumian and Hänggi provide in their paper a copy of Wallace Stevens' 1919 poem, The Place of the Solitaries to elegantly illustrate, from an abstract perspective, the ceaseless nature of noise.
A year after the Astumian-Hänggi paper, David Leighs organic chemistry group reported the first artificial molecular Brownian motors. In 2007 the same team reported a Maxwells Demon-inspired molecular information ratchet.
Another important demonstration of nanoengineering and nanotechnology was the building of a practical artificial Brownian motor by IBM in 2018. Specifically, an energy landscape was created by accurately shaping a nanofluidic slit, and alternate potentials and an oscillating electric field were then used to “rock” nanoparticles to produce directed motion. The experiment successfully made the nanoparticles move along a track in the shape of the outline of the IBM logo, and serves as an important milestone in the practical use of Brownian motors and other elements at the nanoscale.Additionally, various institutions around the world, such as the University of Sydney Nano Institute, headquartered at the Sydney Nanoscience Hub (SNH), and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI) at the University of Basel, are examples of the research activity emerging in the field of nanoscience. Brownian motors remain a central concept in both the understanding of natural molecular motors and the construction of useful nanoscale machines that involve directed motion.