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Unidirectional rotary motion in achiral molecular motors

Nature Chemistry volume 7, pages 890–896 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Control of the direction of motion is an essential feature of biological rotary motors and results from the intrinsic chirality of the amino acids from which the motors are made. In synthetic autonomous light-driven rotary motors, point chirality is transferred to helical chirality, and this governs their unidirectional rotation. However, achieving directional rotary motion in an achiral molecular system in an autonomous fashion remains a fundamental challenge. Here, we report an achiral molecular motor in which the presence of a pseudo-asymmetric carbon atom proved to be sufficient for exclusive autonomous disrotary motion of two appended rotor moieties. Isomerization around the two double bonds enables both rotors to move in the same direction with respect to their surroundings—like wheels on an axle—demonstrating that autonomous unidirectional rotary motion can be achieved in a symmetric system.

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Figure 1: Directional rotary motion in symmetric systems.
Figure 2: Calculated thermal behaviour of 4.
Figure 3: Rotational behaviour of 4.
Figure 4: Photochemical and thermal isomerization processes of 4.
Figure 5: Isolation and identification of isomers of 5.
Figure 6: Unidirectional rotation of (R,(Z,M),(E,P))-5 followed by SFC and 1H NMR.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported financially by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO-CW), The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), NanoNextNL of the Government of the Netherlands and 130 partners, the European Research Council (ERC; advanced grant no. 227897 to B.L.F.) and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Gravitation programme no. 024.001.035). The authors thank P. van der Meulen for assistance with the NMR experiments, H.A.V. Kistemaker for pioneering synthesis and T.C. Pijper for discussions regarding DFT calculations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Systems Chemistry, Stratingh Institute for Chemistry and Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, Groningen, 9747 AG, The Netherlands

    Jos C. M. Kistemaker, Peter Štacko, Johan Visser & Ben L. Feringa

Authors
  1. Jos C. M. Kistemaker
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  2. Peter Štacko
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  3. Johan Visser
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  4. Ben L. Feringa
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Contributions

All authors contributed to various stages of the design and analysis of achiral motors. J.V. prepared the first meso motor. P.Š. performed the synthesis of advanced achiral motors. J.C.M.K. performed the computations and the experiments on photochemical and thermal behaviour. J.C.M.K. wrote the paper, with assistance from P.Š. and B.L.F.

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Correspondence to Ben L. Feringa.

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Kistemaker, J., Štacko, P., Visser, J. et al. Unidirectional rotary motion in achiral molecular motors. Nature Chem 7, 890–896 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2362

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