Nanoarchitectonics and applications of artificial molecular machines in smart polymer materials

Abstract

Artificial molecular machine is one of the most brilliant areas in the last half a century. They represent people's control abilities to the microscopic molecules in solution. Beside the hard works in the proof-of-concept research on the exploration of fundamental principles, the wide hybrid of them with diverse materials was confirmed. Through the coupling of these movable molecules with various materials, the microscopic motion of molecular machines could be easily translated and amplified to macroscopic world to produce useful work. The integration further improves the ability of us to control the molecules in solid state. Among the various materials, polymers have the widest applications in many areas. The incorporation of artificial molecular machines into the bulk polymer materials would produce more influence on our life in the near future. In this review, we summarized the proofed hybrid strategies of polymers with different molecular machines. We hope that the summarization could provide a research roadmap for the related researchers.