Unidirectional rotary motion in a liquid crystalline environment: color tuning by a molecular motor

Life could not exist without motion induced by a variety of molecular motors. The construction of artificial motors by chemical synthesis, which can power motions that lead to macroscopic detectable effects in a system, is a major endeavor in contemporary science. To move toward this goal, a host-guest system, composed of a nematic liquid crystal film doped with a chiral light-driven molecular motor, is assembled. Irradiation of the film results in unidirectional rotary motion of the molecular motor, which induces a motion of the mesogenic molecules leading to a molecular reorganization and, as a consequence, a change in the color of the film. In this way, by control of the rotary motion at the molecular level, color tuning over the entire visible spectrum is achieved. These findings demonstrate that a molecular motor can exert a visually observable macroscopic change in a material.