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A photoswitch is a type of molecule that can change its structural geometry and chemical properties upon irradiation with electromagnetic radiation.Although often used interchangeably with the term molecular machine, a switch does not perform work upon a change in its shape whereas a machine does. [1]
The first example of an artificial molecular machine (AMM) was reported in 1994, featuring a rotaxane with a ring and two different possible binding sites. In 2016 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
The interlocked rings rotate with respect to one another. This motion can often be evaluated by NMR spectroscopy, among other methods.When molecular recognition motifs exist in the finished catenane (usually those that were used to synthesize the catenane), the catenane can have one or more thermodynamically preferred positions of the rings with respect to each other (recognition sites).
On the molecular level, the interlocked molecules cannot be separated without the breaking of the covalent bonds that comprise the conjoined molecules; this is referred to as a mechanical bond. Examples of mechanically interlocked molecular architectures include catenanes , rotaxanes , molecular knots , and molecular Borromean rings .
Mechanochemistry is not the same as mechanosynthesis, which refers specifically to the machine-controlled construction of complex molecular products. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] In natural environments, mechanochemical reactions are frequently induced by physical processes such as earthquakes, [ 4 ] glacier movement [ 5 ] or hydraulic action of rivers or waves.
Synthetic molecular motors are molecular machines capable of continuous directional rotation under an energy input. [2] Although the term "molecular motor" has traditionally referred to a naturally occurring protein that induces motion (via protein dynamics), some groups also use the term when referring to non-biological, non-peptide synthetic motors.
A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition. This is because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and then assemble specific sequences of amino acids to construct protein molecules. However, the term "molecular assembler" usually refers to theoretical human-made ...
The term "Brownian motor" was originally invented by Swiss theoretical physicist Peter Hänggi in 1995. [3] The Brownian motor, like the phenomenon of Brownian motion that underpinned its underlying theory, was also named after 19th century Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who, while looking through a microscope at pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella immersed in water, famously described the ...