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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Light-driven Molecular Motors on Surfaces for Single Molecular Imaging
Published on: March 13, 2019
Bio-inspired novel design principles for artificial molecular motors
Thorsten Hugel1, Christina Lumme
1Physik-Department, IMETUM, CeNS, CIPSM, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany. thorsten.hugel@ph.tum.de
Abstract:
Since we have learned that biological organisms like ourselves are driven by tiny biological molecular motors we try to design and produce artificial molecular motors. However, despite the huge efforts since decades, man-made artificial molecular motors are still far from biological molecular motors or macroscopic motors with regard to performance, especially with respect to energy efficiency. This review highlights recent progress towards artificial molecular motors and discusses how their design and development can be guided by the design concepts of biological molecular motors or macroscopic motors.
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