Issue 10, 2017

Light-driven rotary molecular motors without point chirality: a minimal design

Abstract

A fundamental requirement for achieving photoinduced unidirectional rotary motion about an olefinic bond in a molecular motor is that the potential energy surface of the excited state is asymmetric with respect to clockwise and counterclockwise rotations. In most available light-driven rotary molecular motors, such asymmetry is guaranteed by the presence of a stereocenter. Here, we present non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulations based on multiconfigurational quantum chemistry to demonstrate that this chiral feature is not essential for inducing unidirectional rotary motion in molecules that incorporate a cyclohexenylidene moiety into a protonated Schiff-base framework. Rather, the simulations show that it is possible to exploit the intrinsic asymmetry of the puckered cyclohexenylidene to control the direction of photoinduced rotation.

Graphical abstract: Light-driven rotary molecular motors without point chirality: a minimal design

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
12 12 2016
Accepted
17 2 2017
First published
20 2 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2017,19, 6952-6956

Light-driven rotary molecular motors without point chirality: a minimal design

J. Wang, B. Oruganti and B. Durbeej, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2017, 19, 6952 DOI: 10.1039/C6CP08484B

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