Single molecule thermal gearing effect

Observation of a thermally activated gearing effect between two hexa- tert -butyl-decacyclene (HBDC) molecule-gears is reported using the Au(111) surface to constrain lateral diffusion of the molecules at 77 K. An on-purpose selected small 2D HBDC nano-island is first destabilized using the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in a soft-pulling mode of molecular manipulation. It follows a long sequence of thermally activated spontaneous molecular reconfigurations, leading up to a molecular gearing effect. Using coupled Langevin equations, a simulation of this thermal process is proposed to determine the conditions for this thermally activated gearing effect.

Subjects

HBDC

Molecule-gear

STM

Thermal-rotation

DDC Class

541.3: Physical Chemistry

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication version

publishedVersion

Name

1-s2.0-S0009261425006566-main.pdf

Size

4.26 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Single molecule thermal gearing effect