Approaches to rotary molecular motors*
M. Frederick Hawthorne, Bhaskar M. Ramachandran, Robert D. Kennedy, and Carolyn B. Knobler
Department of Chemistry, University of California, Los Angeles,607 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569, USA
Abstract: Interest has recently intensified in the search for molecular motors and actuators capable of delivering useful work to nanodevices under the control of electrochemical or photochemical power sources. While many of these man-made molecular machines are designed to deliver rectilinear motion, very few are proposed for the controlled delivery of rotary motion on the time scale characteristic of intramolecular rearrangements. The adaptation of commo-bis-dicarbollide metallacarborane structures to the possible design and synthesis of such rotary molecular motors is now under investigation. Progress toward this goal will be reported.
Keywords: metallacarboranes; molecular motors; crystal structures; nanodevices; dicarbollides.
*Paper based on a presentation at the 12th International Meeting on Boron Chemistry (IMEBORON-XII), Sendai, Japan, 11-15 September 2005. Other presentations are published in this issue, pp. 1299-1453.