Steric Effects on the Thermal Processes of Hemithioindigo Based Molecular Motor Rotation.

Tuning the thermal behavior of light driven molecular motors is fundamentally important for their future rational design. In many molecular motors thermal ratcheting steps are comprised of helicity inversions, energetically stabilizing the initial photoproducts. In this work we investigated a series of five hemithioindigo (HTI) based molecular motors to reveal the influence of steric hindrance in close proximity to the rotation axle on this process.

Supramolecular Relay-Control of Organocatalysis with a Hemithioindigo-Based Molecular Motor.

Integration of individual molecular components such as molecular motors or switches into larger meta-functional systems represents a current challenge at the forefront of molecular machine research. Here we present a modular supramolecular approach to relay the photoinduced geometry changes of a hemithioindigo based molecular motor into catalytic efficiency of a chemical reaction. Using the intrinsic chemical nature of the motor for recognition of different hydrogen-bonding organocatalysts a greater than 10-fold modulation in binding affinity is achieved upon photoisomerization.

Tuning the Ground and Excited State Dynamics of Hemithioindigo Molecular Motors by Changing Substituents.

Efficiency and performance of light triggered molecular motors are crucial features that need to be mechanistically understood to improve the performance and enable conscious property tailoring for specific applications. In this work, three different hemithioindigo-based molecular motors are investigated and all four steps in their complete unidirectional rotation are unraveled fully quantitatively. Transient absorption spectroscopy across twelve orders of magnitude in time is used to probe the fs nuclear motions up to the ms thermal kinetics, covering the timeframe of the whole motor rotation.