Artificial molecular machine at work: production of polyrotaxanes with precision

• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（23）
• 所属期刊栏目: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
• 页码范围: 1964-1965
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Attributed to their impressive structures holding together by mechanical bonds and unique controllable motion behaviors, mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) have proven to be privileged platforms for the construction of artificial molecular machines [1].The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to J.F.Stoddart and J.P.Sauvage who made original contributions to the MIMs-based artificial molecular machines jointly with B.L.Feringa who pioneered the molecular motor research [2], opening up a new golden era for artificial molecular machines.By taking inspiration from nature, diverse MIMs-based artificial molecular machines are still being created, which are endowed great expectations to deal with some fundamental and challenging issues in chemistry and nanoscience [3].Along with the rapid development of MIMs-based artificial molecular machines, growing interests on high-order MIMs architectures with increasing complexity such as polyrotaxanes or rotaxane dendrimers have been witnessed during past three decades owing to their stretchy mechanical properties and wide applications especially in areas such as smart materials [4,5].In particular, taking advantage of molecular recognition and non-covalent synthesis, diverse polyrotaxanes, especially the main-chain necklace-like ones with multiple threaded rings, have been successfully prepared [6].However, how to precisely control the exact numbers and densities of the rings threaded onto the polymer chains remains a long-standing challenge in polyrotaxane synthesis.