Bio-inspired novel design principles for artificial molecular motors

Abstract

Since we have learned that biological organisms like ourselves are driven by tiny biological molecular motors we try to design and produce artificial molecular motors. However, despite the huge efforts since decades, man-made artificial molecular motors are still far from biological molecular motors or macroscopic motors with regard to performance, especially with respect to energy efficiency. This review highlights recent progress towards artificial molecular motors and discusses how their design and development can be guided by the design concepts of biological molecular motors or macroscopic motors.