Orientation of motion of a flat folding nano-swimmer in soft matter.

It is well established that anisotropic molecules do have a preferential direction of motion at short time scales that is washed out at larger times by Brownian noise. Anisotropic molecular motors are able to move at lower temperatures when Brownian noise is smaller suggesting the possibility of oriented motion for larger time scales. We use molecular dynamics simulations to investigate that possibility, calculating the displacements of a simple flat folding molecular nano-swimmer embedded in soft matter.

Optimizing the motion of a folding molecular motor in soft matter.

We use molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the displacement of a periodically folding molecular motor in a viscous environment. Our aim is to find significant parameters to optimize the displacement of the motor. We find that the choice of a massy host or of small host molecules significantly increase the motor displacements.

Folding time dependence of the motions of a molecular motor in an amorphous medium.

We investigate the dependence of the displacements of a molecular motor embedded inside a glassy material on its folding characteristic time τ_{f}. We observe two different time regimes. For slow foldings (regime I) the diffusion evolves very slowly with τ_{f}, while for rapid foldings (regime II) the diffusion increases strongly with τ_{f}(D≈τ_{f}^{-2}), suggesting two different physical mechanisms.

How does the motion of the surrounding molecules depend on the shape of a folding molecular motor?

Azobenzene based molecules have the property of isomerizing when illuminated. In relation with that photoisomerization property, azobenzene containing materials are the subject of unexplained massive mass transport. In this work we use an idealised rectangular chromophore model to study the dependence of the isomerization induced transport on the chromophore's dimensions.