Functional nanomachines: Recent advances in synthetic molecular machinery

Abstract

A mini-review: As the top-down approach for miniaturisation of technology reaches its inherent limitations, robust strategies to build nanoscale machinery components, which have the ability to convert an input energy into motion, from the molecular level up, become increasingly important. Nature is certainly the most proficient in the control of molecular level motion; nevertheless, many successes have been enjoyed in the pursuit of mimicking key aspects of nature's molecular machines, including two state switches, ion pumps, unidirectional rotary motors and molecular robots that can move molecular cargo. This mini-review outlines of some of the most impressive recent examples towards this end.