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Reversing the direction in a light-driven rotary molecular motor

Abstract

Biological rotary motors can alter their mechanical function by changing the direction of rotary motion. Achieving a similar reversal of direction of rotation in artificial molecular motors presents a fundamental stereochemical challenge: how to change from clockwise to anticlockwise motion without compromising the autonomous unidirectional rotary behaviour of the system. A new molecular motor with multilevel control of rotary motion is reported here, in which the direction of light-powered rotation can be reversed by base-catalysed epimerization. The key steps are deprotonation and reprotonation of the photochemically generated less-stable isomers during the 360° unidirectional rotary cycle, with complete inversion of the configuration at the stereogenic centre. The ability to change directionality is an essential step towards mechanical molecular systems with adaptive functional behaviour.

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Figure 1: Conceptual illustration of rotary motion in a molecular motor and the change from clockwise to anticlockwise rotation.
Figure 2: Design of a molecular motor for base-mediated epimerization.
Figure 3: Schematic representation of controlled clockwise and anticlockwise rotary cycles of molecular motor 1 using different triggers.
Figure 4: Synthesis of the reversible molecular motor 1.
Figure 5: Monitoring of photochemical and thermal behaviour of a reversible molecular motor.
Figure 6: Monitoring of the base-catalysed epimerization process.
Figure 7: Characterization of various stages of the full rotation cycle comprising photochemical, thermal and base-catalysed isomerization steps.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, the European Research Council (advanced grant no: 227897) and the University of Groningen for financial support.

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Contributions

N.R. and M.M.P. carried out the experimental work. All the authors contributed to the design of the experiments, the analysis of the data and the writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to Ben L. Feringa.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ruangsupapichat, N., Pollard, M., Harutyunyan, S. et al. Reversing the direction in a light-driven rotary molecular motor. Nature Chem 3, 53–60 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.872

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