Sarkar, Piyush KantiPiyush KantiSarkarPark, SoyoungSoyoungParkSharma, KedarKedarSharmaSun, NingweiNingweiSunLissel, FranziskaFranziskaLisselJoachim, ChristianChristianJoachim2025-11-242025-11-242025-11-05Chemical Physics Letters 883: 142513 (2026)https://hdl.handle.net/11420/58995Observation 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.en0009-26142025Elsevierhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/HBDCMolecule-gearSTMThermal-rotationNatural Sciences and Mathematics::541: Physical; Theoretical::541.3: Physical ChemistryJournal Articlehttps://doi.org/10.15480/882.1621810.1016/j.cplett.2025.14251310.15480/882.16218Journal Article