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The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been won by Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Ben Feringa, for their work on the design and synthesis of tiny molecular machines. This Collection, drawn from Nature Research journals, highlights some of the important contributions to this field.
The way forward for a field in its infancy is to focus on complexity and integrated systems that may lead to emergent phenomena, suggests J. Fraser Stoddart at Northwestern University.
Biological motors and pumps are equilibrium devices that couple chemical, electrical and mechanical processes in an environment that is far from equilibrium. Recognition of the key role played by microscopic reversibility in their operation is a first step towards rational design of artificial molecular devices.
Inspired by biology, chemists have created a cornucopia of molecular parts that act as switches, motors and ratchets. Now it is time to do something useful with them.
Two molecular motors have been developed that use chemical energy to drive rotational motion in a single direction. The findings bring the prospect of devices powered by such motors a tantalizing step closer. See Letter p.235
An autonomous chemically driven artificial molecular machine uses information acquired by allosteric interactions combined with an exergonic reaction to know which way to go.
An axle-shaped molecule pumps charged rings from solution into an alkyl collection unit, a mechanism that, in two repetitive cycles, takes the system increasingly further from equilibrium.
A small molecule that mimics the sequence-specific peptide synthesis of nature's ribosomes paves the way for more elaborate artificial molecular synthesizers.
A supramolecular polymer made of thousands of bistable [c2]daisy chains amplifies individual nanometric displacements up to the micrometre-length scale, in a concerted process reminiscent of muscular cells.
This paper describes a 160,000 bit molecular electronic memory circuit, which is roughly analogous to a projected year 2020 DRAM circuit. The circuit has a large numbers of non-working memory bits, but these are readily identified and isolated. The working bits were then configured to form a fully functional random access memory circuit for storing and retrieving information.
The construction and operation of interlocked molecular machines often rely on the mutual recognition of different building blocks through a range of non-covalent interactions. Researchers have now shown that the versatility of bipyridinium systems can be increased by taking advantage of the complexes formed between their radical cations; with this approach they have been able to make electrochemically switchable bi- and tristable rotaxanes.
Biological rotary motors can alter their mechanical function by changing the direction of rotary motion. Now, researchers have designed a synthetic light-driven rotary motor in which the direction of rotation can be reversed on command by changing the chirality of the molecular motor through base-induced epimerization.
The piston-like, translational motion of a molecular shuttle — a process that is fundamental to many mechanically interlocked molecular switches and machines — has now been demonstrated to occur inside the highly organized and dense structure (containing approximately 1021 shuttles per cm3) of a metal–organic framework material.
Avoiding equal probability for clockwise and anticlockwise rotation is essential for the function of molecular motors, and both biological and synthetic systems take advantage of chirality to control the rotary direction. Now it has been shown, by integrating two rotor moieties in a symmetric meso motor design, that light-driven unidirectional rotary motion can be achieved in an achiral system.
Solid-state fluorescent materials show promise for potential applications in security and anti-counterfeiting technologies. Here, the authors report a heterorotaxane which has found application in security inks with highly tunable solid-state fluorescence through supramolecular encapsulation.
When supplied with redox energy, a dumbbell-shaped molecule can take small charged molecules from solution and thread them around an oligomethylene chain.
A system is described in which a small macrocycle is continuously transported directionally around a cyclic molecular track when powered by irreversible reactions of a chemical fuel; such autonomous chemically fuelled molecular motors should find application as engines in molecular nanotechnology.
Control of motion at the molecular level is an integral requirement for the development of future nanoscale machinery. Now, governed by the fundamental reactivity principles of organometallic chemistry, a biaryl rotor is shown to exhibit 360° unidirectional rotary motion driven by the conversion of two simple fuels.
