Abstract
Molecular motors come in all shapes and sizes, but they generally run on either chemical fuels or light . A team led by J. Fraser Stoddart at Northwestern University has now invented a molecular motor that is powered by electricity ( Nature 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05421-6 ). The motor consists of two molecular rings that move around a larger loop in response to an oscillating voltage, completing a full cycle in just a few minutes. Whereas some chemically fueled molecular machines can be disrupted by the fuel’s waste products, the electric motor neatly avoids that issue. “One of the nice things about using electricity is that it solves the problem of waste,” says the University of Manchester’s David Leigh, who was not involved in the work. The electric motor’s cyclobis(paraquat- p -phenylene) rings travel around their circular track thanks to a series of oxidation and reduction reactions—the same kind of chemistry
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