Synthetic Molecular Machines for Transportation and Pumping, and Theoretical Analysis for Them

Abstract

Biology utilises molecular machines for various purposes, such as transportation, synthesis, signal transduction and information processing. Synthetic chemists have strived to design and synthesise molecular machines that are reminiscent of their biological counterparts. Here we present two molecular machines for transportation with different mechanisms. One is a directional molecular transporter utilising multiple hydrazone-type switches, which coordinates the operation of multiple movable parts. The other is a catalysis-driven small molecule pump, which autonomously and progressively pumps multiple macrocycles as long as the energy source is present. We also analysed the mechanism of a chemically driven autonomous synthetic molecular motor with information thermodynamics, a framework that treats information as a physical variable and quantitatively relates it with other thermodynamic parameters such as entropy and free energy. These attempts to create synthetic molecular machines that are capable of sophisticated tasks and to theoretically analyse their mechanisms will pave the way to future nanotechnology with life-like properties, and advance the understanding of biological molecular machines.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	David Leigh (Supervisor) & Michael Greaney (Supervisor)