Molecular rotors and motors: recent advances and future challenges

At the "Molecular Rotors and Motors" symposium of the Spring 2009 ACS National Meeting in Salt Lake City (March 22-26), a diverse mix of talks addressed many current issues in the field. Speakers described topics that varied from single-molecule rotors and nanomachines to exquisite synthetic approaches toward building functional materials and mathematical and computational methods aimed at uncovering design opportunities and highlighting the fundamental limitations of molecular motors. While the realization of building useful nanomachines remains far off, a general consensus abounded that investigating biological systems and understanding the implications of the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics for the behavior of nanostructures will help drive important advances in the quest for molecular machinery. Molecular rotors were demonstrated to have practical applications as probes for microviscosity, and many speakers presented experimental studies that indicated that highly directed translation and rotation of individual molecules, as well as interacting dipolar arrays, are just around the corner. While this Nano Focus is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the subject, it will focus on several key advances that were presented at the ACS meeting and highlight future challenges for the field of molecular rotors and motors.